remember tom cruise and brian brown as rival bartenders juggling bottles of booze in " cocktail " ? remember how stupid that looked ? and remember the scantily-clad dancers of " flashdance " getting doused with buckets of water ? well , " coyote ugly " does those films five better ( or six better if you count john goodman ) , since here we have piper perado , maria bello , tyra banks , melanie lynskey , and izabella miko doing the absolut spinning and jiggling thing while pouring pitchers of perrier all over their semi-naked torsos . no , goodman doesn't flip jim beams or wear anything particularly risqu ? in the film but he * does * get up on the bar and start gyrating with the rest of them . and the central character's love interest , played by an australian actor named adam garcia , proves * he * can get up on that bar and start shimmying along with the rest of them too . what seems to have started life as a victoria's secret photo shoot quickly deteriorates into one heck of an embarrassing movie . violet ( perado ) is a south amboy hopeful who tries to make it big as a songwriter ( not a welder ) in new jack city . as na ? ve as they come , she's fobbed off by music producer's receptionists by the scorn-ful and has her apartment robbed hours after touching down in chinatown . and , like her mother before her , she gets stage fright whenever she tries to do the open mike night thing . when she sees a trio of babe-a-licious barkeeps thumbing through a stack of $20s in an all-night diner , violet simply has to check out this bar they call coyote ugly . lil ( bello ) , the no-nonsense owner , agrees to give violet an audition but violet blows it . still , lil gives violet another chance . a riot breaks out ( riots are the order of the day at 'ugly's , since the staff are relentless in flaunting their sexual wares , flambeeing the bar , and soaking the patrons with diet sprite--this is certifiable behavior in case i didn't mention it ) but violet successfully subdues the crowd by singing along to blondie's " one way or another " on the jukebox . she's hired ! and cured , since this little episode gives her the confidence to sing in an amateur talent contest where her dad ( goodman ) , the junk food-eating , laundry-impaired toll collector , comes to see her and is as proud as punch . the end .
