Ugly future looking good

Coyote Ugly's female bartenders

By BBC News Online's entertainment correspondent Tom Brook

Coyote Ugly arrives in US cinemas this weekend amid predictions it will transform Piper Perabo, its virtually unknown leading actress, into a fully-fledged star.

The film is a tale of a young working-class girl who dreams of making it big as a songwriter in New York.

It bears some similarity to the 1983 hit Flashdance in which a young woman, a welder, wants to become a ballet dancer.

The resemblance is far from coincidental because both films come from Jerry Bruckheimer, the veteran Hollywood producer with the golden touch.

Perabo plays a struggling musician in New York

Bruckheimer has brought hits such as Top Gun, The Rock and Armageddon to the big screen.

In the process, he effectively launched the careers of several young actors cast in his films.

Bruckheimer is convinced that Perabo, who resembles an amalgam of Julia Roberts, Liv Tyler and Angelina Jolie, will be Hollywood's next best thing.

Bruckheimer boasts: "We have had real luck with our actors before, Tom Cruise, Will Smith and Ben Affleck, have all gone on to have phenomenal careers and I expect the same of her."

Sex sells

Piper Perabo plays Violet Sanford, a 21-year-old struggling musician from New Jersey who arrives in the Big Apple to discover that life doesn't quite work out the way she expected.

Piper finds her character familiar: "She had a similar history to me," says the actress.

Perabo (with co-star John Goodman) is believed to have real star quality

"I am from New Jersey and I moved to New York to be an actor like she came to be a songwriter so I understand her backstory very well.

"I like that she moves to New York with her dream and she is not asking anybody's permission and she has no back-up plans and she's just going for it."

But Violet's dreams are temporarily thwarted by a lack of outside interest in her song. To make ends meet she gets a job as a barmaid in the Coyote Ugly saloon.

In this establishment, which is based on a real-life New York drinking place, the barmaids tantalise their male customers with suggestive dancing on the bar, and spraying their patrons with water when they get out of hand.

Most of the actresses are unknown, with the exception of model Tyra Banks. In the absence of star power the film's promoters are using sex to sell the film.

Perabo, as Violet, adapts to Coyote Ugly's way of life

The movie has been very heavily marketed through posters and magazines sporting glossy provocative images of the actresses who play the barmaids.

The brazen use of sex to promote this picture, and the suggestive gymnastics of the bargirls are not seen as degrading by either the actresses - or film's creators.

Screenwriter Gina Wendkos proudly believes that "the magic of Coyote Ugly is the female bartenders who flaunt new styles of post-feminism".

Winning formula

Australian actor Adam Garcia - best known for his stage work in the West End production of Saturday Night Fever - plays the romantic lead opposite Perabo.

He doesn't know quite what to make of the Coyote Ugly women - and the post-feminist label.

But he says: "These are girls who are comfortable with their own sexuality, women have been taking advantage of their sexual power over men since it all began.

Garcia (right) says women have always used their sexual power over men

"So this is just another revelation of that. Essentially there is nothing wrong with it."

Although the marketing would have you believe otherwise, the Coyote Ugly barmaids are not the focus of the story.

Essentially this is a syrupy formulaic tale of a young girl who realises her songwriting dreams - and finds a man.

It has all the hallmarks of a Jerry Bruckheimer hit: high-energy, fast editing, a loud soundtrack, attractive actors, and melodrama that tugs at the heartstrings.

If all goes according to Bruckheimer's plan, the film's strangely-named lead actress will be a household name by the time the summer is over.