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A couple of weeks ago, the YouTube algorithm served me a video about 2View VHS cassettes—a failed piece of technology that was actually tested here in the Netherlands, which immediately piqued my curiosity. In the video, the creator explains how the technology works, using Coyote Ugly—one of the few movies ever released on a 2View VHS cassette—as the demonstration. He doesn’t really dive into the film itself, as this is first and foremost a tech showcase, but he does sum it up rather bluntly as:
“a lot of screaming and people going ‘whoo’ all the time.”
And that might just be the best one-sentence summary this movie can get—but there’s, of course, a bit more to it than that:
Coyote Ugly follows Violet Sanford, an aspiring songwriter from New Jersey who moves to New York City hoping to break into the music industry, only to find her confidence and finances quickly tested. She lands a job at the rowdy, free-spirited Coyote Ugly bar, where bartenders dance on the counter and command the crowd with bold attitude, pushing Violet far outside her comfort zone.
Coyote Ugly was released in 2000 and was quite a big deal at the time. The theme song by LeAnn Rimes became a chart-topper, and its music video—packed with plenty of thirst-trap shots from the film—was in heavy rotation on music channels. At the same time, it’s a movie that was quickly forgotten, and those who do remember it often treat it as the butt of a joke. The comment section of that self-erasing VHS cassette video is filled with remarks like, “you did the world a service, turning a video cassette of Coyote Ugly into a blank cassette.”
And that reputation isn’t entirely undeserved. Coyote Ugly runs almost entirely on age-old clichés, using sexy women in revealing outfits as its main selling point. The story of a young girl trying to make it big in the city has been done to death, and her journey to become a songwriter while dancing in a bar doesn’t just echo Flashdance—it practically is Flashdance, only with the stage swapped for a bar, and without the side plot involving a would-be stand-up comedian.
While released in 2000, Coyote Ugly feels very much like a ’90s “location” movie—one of those films where a single setting dominates the story and becomes a character in its own right. Think of movies like Clerks, Mallrats, Empire Records, Career Opportunities or even Reservoir Dogs and Home Alone. The bar in Coyote Ugly is just as central as the human cast, with its intricate set design—complete with a giant fan that’s presumably meant to cool the place down. From a safety standpoint, though, that fan already seems questionable, and it only gets worse from there.
It’s honestly surprising the movie even acknowledges a fire marshal inspection, because the titular bar wouldn’t stand a chance in the real world. The bartenders dance on a counter that’s constantly drenched in spilled liquor—since pouring a drink without making a mess appears to be off-limits—while a crowd of rowdy, often handsy men reaches up at them. It all feels like an accident waiting to happen. At one point, they even set the bar on fire and keep dancing on it. Watching that scene today, especially with real-life incidents like the fire at Le Constellation in mind, makes it a surprisingly uncomfortable moment to sit through.
A movie like Coyote Ugly probably wouldn’t get made today—or if it did, it would likely be on a much smaller budget and quietly dropped onto a streaming service. But this was 2000, when a film built around flirtation, attitude, and bar-top spectacle could still draw a crowd. There’s even a sex scene with actual nudity, something that feels increasingly rare in mainstream releases—these days, it almost feels like only Sydney Sweeney is keeping that tradition alive.
Another element that firmly dates the film is its wall-to-wall soundtrack. The movie is packed with needle drops and, of course, builds toward its big musical payoff: Can’t Fight the Moonlight, performed in the final scene by LeAnn Rimes herself.
Coyote Ugly isn’t a great movie—or even a particularly good one. It’s one cliché after another, with every scene playing out exactly as you’d expect. But that’s also part of its appeal. This is comfort food, pure and simple. And if you’re hungry for a glossy, early-2000s fantasy of young women dancing on bars in tight, revealing outfits—complete with plenty of gratuitous close-ups of their backsides, and scenes of them getting soaked or stripping down to their underwear at a baseball game—it delivers exactly what it promises over the course of its 100-minute runtime.
