Coyote Ugly – The Double-Shot Edition (Blu-ray)
Picture:
B+ Sound: B+ Extras: D Film: D
Some
films are so bad that they know it, could care less about it and when they
become hits, the glory can be annoying or fleeting. Fortunately, David McNally’s Jerry
Bruckheimer production Coyote Ugly
(2000; a film that would have never
been greenlighted after 9/11) was Disney’s way of having another hit like the
Tom Cruise 1987 hit Cocktail, except
with a female cast. Cocktail set Alcoholics Anonymous back 100 years and Coyote Ugly was designed to set as many
people as possible over the brink.
In
another bar with wild women (think Flashdance)
where women dance on the tables in almost laughable quasi-Musical sequences
from hell that helped to kill MTV when the ‘M’ still stood for music, Piper
Perabo is an aspiring artist who gets a job there (good thing she is not going
to be forced to be a hooker, but Disney already did Pretty Woman) who meets other women who dance, finds a new world of
possibility (!?!) and might even have some fun instead of having a dead end
life.
No, not
even liquid depressants can stop her, but the all-time awful screenplay by Gina
Wendkos (who later wrote hack works like The
Perfect Man and the two cursed Princess
Diaries films) sets Women’s Liberation back a few centuries with this mess
of a new world. Some may call it
progress, but we call it hell!
John Goodman,
Tyra Banks, Bridget Moynahan, Maria Bello, Ellen Cleghorne, Bud Cort, LeAnn
Rimes and even Johnny Knoxville, Alex Borstein and Michael Bay show up in this
bizarre mess that has not aged well in any way, shape or form. Even alcoholics making this into a drinking
game couldn’t save it!
The 1080p
2.35 X 1 digital High Definition was shot in Super 35mm by Amir M. Morki, who
makes this look like one of the most generic-looking of films, the kind that
kills filmmaking with its flat Super 35 look and more blues than we need. It may be clean and clear, but it is also
forgettable, unoriginal and lame. Morki
is competent at best and except for a few shots in Pacific Heights, Is far from my favorite Director of
Photography. The PCM 16/48 5.1 mix is
better than the Dolby Digital mixes (5.1 & 2.0) here plus the DTS on one of
the DVDs, but it also shows its age with a sonic ceiling at 16-Bits and a sound
design too impressed with itself. Not
even the great Trevor Horn’s music talents could save this turkey.
The often
useless extras include the trailer, LeAnn Rimes Music Video, Coyote 101, Search For The Stars, Inside
The Songs and two audio commentary tracks (separate on the theatrical cut,
combined on the extended cut) which are endless.
Accept
for Bello, this did not set the cast up for enduring careers at the time and
the hype around Perabo may have hurt more than helped, though she is doing
decent work in independent efforts and solid films like The Prestige. In the end, Coyote Ugly was much ado about
absolutely nothing and that for good reason is why no one talks about it much
anymore.
- Nicholas Sheffo
