Film Review – Conrad – 17/11/00
New York, New York! – where models work as barmaids, dreams are derailed, and good looks and talent are not enough on their own for you to ‘make it’. Violet Sanford (Piper Perabo) dreams of taking her song writing talent to New York and ‘making it’, only
to find herself up against not only the thousands of other beautiful talented people there with the same idea, but also the cynics in the industry who won’t help and those who will take advantage of her. Fortunately for her, one of those who does take advantage of her – Kevin (Andy Garcia) – turns out to be somewhat less than he claims but still nice enough to become her romantic interest. Their relationship is given just enough depth by the complexities of his character and his mysterious past, which is a thankful foil to her sweet naivete at times. Still they manage to get together, fall apart, let each other down, and misunderstand each other enough to keep it interesting before the inevitable smaltzy ending. Meanwhile the plot revolves around a new bar in town called "Coyote Ugly". The name appears to be somewhat incongruous with the models, sorry barmaids, that work there but when it is defined as "when the person you wake up next to, after a wild night, is laying on your arm and they’re SO UGLY that you’d rather chew off your arm than wake them up", you can see it is a good name for a pick up bar. This is no ordinary pick up bar either. This one has bar maids that wear costumes, work in character and sing and dance on the bar top. Some of the best parts of the movie were the dance sequences which had a sweaty close-up liveliness that really set the mood of the bar. The characters portrayed by each of the bar maids were two dimensional stereotypes created specially to suit the class of clientele they attracted but by the end of the movie it seemed that some of them never left that character behind them when they left work. Sometimes that’s the only way to raise a laugh. So poor old Violet, getting desperately poor and hungry after all her rejections from the music world, overhears some women talking about how much money they made one night and how one is leaving, and tracks them down to the bar. Somehow she manages to get a trial but it seems impossible for someone like her to have gotten that far given the wealth of talent around, let alone get the job after being quite useless at it.
The clincher for getting the job turns out to be her ability to sing so sweetly along with the jukebox and tame the savage beasts that frequent the bar. It doesn’t seem to matter that she can’t dance, pour drinks or do
any of a multitude of tasks that are required, and that surely in a city the size of New York there would be thousands who could. Somehow she transforms into a siren who transfixes the beasts, literally in the middle of a brawl. Magic. Unbelievable.
Once the bounds of believability were broken I was no longer as drawn in to the film. It ended up being a reasonable bit of drama, but fairly lightweight. It still took a good look at the theme of pursuing your dream without getting sidetracked. It can be easy to forget that the path you have taken was meant to be a means to an end and not the end in itself.
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