8/07/00 2:45 p.m.
Coyote Howler
This movie is a plug-ugly dud.

By Rich Lowry, NR's editor

ow bad is Coyote Ugly? It doesn't even manage to shamelessly exploit Tyra Banks. The Victoria's Secret model — who plays one of the smoking-hot bartenders at the hard-swilling downtown Manhattan bar Coyote Ugly — disappears within moments of the film's opening to attend law school. Law school! We don't see her again until near the end, when she briefly returns from her tutorials in torts and contracts to hop atop the bar and pour buckets of ice water all over herself.

But, by then, it's just too late. The problem with Coyote Ugly — O.K., among the problems with Coyote Ugly — is that it is a sappy chick flick masquerading as a exploitative guy eye-candy flick. If it were truly the latter, everything — story, plot, characters — would be subordinate to the scenes of the fleshy gyration on the bar. Instead, they are an occasional, hilarious sidelight to an actual "story," which is so clichéd and tiresome it doesn't even bear summarizing.

A note on the bar depicted in this movie: There are bars in Manhattan where girls dance on the bar, where drinks are set on fire, where shots are poured directly into customers' mouths, where things are shot or sprayed into the crowd. But the scene at the raucous Coyote Ugly is utterly ridiculous — the girls jump on the bar at a moment's notice and perform tightly choreographed numbers straight out of Riverdance. It would take a professional dance troupe to pull it off. Maybe poor Tyra debarked for law school because it was easier.