A Country music singer, a Broadway star and Jerry Bruckheimer walk into a bar… It’s such a bizarre set-up that we can’t even think of a punchline, but that is because this is no joke: this is Coyote Ugly. The story of Violet Sanford, an aspiring song-writer from New Jersey who moves to New York to pursue her dreams of making music, whilst dancing on bars and meet-cuting comic book nerds (before they were cool).

You can try to resist, try to find another film on the TV guide list, but you know, but you know that you will end up watching this when it comes on the telly. Thank goodness neither Piper Perabo nor Leanne Rhimes’ epic choons have aged, or we might be reminded that this film is (whisper it) 20 years old! Ok, so it’s clearly not a modern flick: These days Violet would have done away with tapes (TAPES!) and that can’t-believe-we-ever-had-something-so-clunky Mac in favour of an iphone, posting her songs on Soundcloud and YouTube to little or no effect until a video of her singing karaoke in a bar goes viral. Adam Garcia would become her social media manager and her dad, having inevitably joined Facebook, would stumble upon a clickbait post with his darling daughter’s picture on it. 21st Century drama ensues.

It’s hard to know what to say about the fact that this is a Jerry Bruckheimer production. We can only imagine that when he picked up the film rights to the GQ article “The Muse of the Coyote Ugly Saloon“, he had a rather different film in mind. For our part we are grateful for the lack of car chases, limited police presence and not a single explosion. Of course, there is an entirely unnecessary nude silhouette (curiously-lit dressing room) as Violet shops for suitably inappropriate outfits, but we’ll give Jerry that one.

The name Coyote Ugly may be a reference to a regretful morning-after (apparently “Cheers was taken”), but that is about as gritty as this film gets – for one thing you know in reality there would be hella lotta drug-taking going on in that bar. Writer Gina Wendkos (who would go on to write the Princess Diaries films) keeps things well within the 12 age-rating – bare arms and midriffs are balanced-out with librarian-length skirts and about as much swearing as you would get from a sober sailor visiting his mother on a Sunday – and gives us the hallmarks of a late 90s/early 00s movie: The dressing-room montage and impromptu ripping-off of teeshirt sleeves to create a oh-so-cool tank top. A roof-top epiphany where the distracting music from across the road ends up giving Violet her “sound”. And of course, allusions to sex from a smoking hot guy, which turn out to be completely innocent: “I want what every man wants at 3 o’clock in the morning – breakfast”.

Cliche though it may be, this story of a girl with talent pursuing her dream and making new friends whilst looking after her lonely dad and trying not to get distracted by the handsome man will always bring a smile to our faces. The nostalgia factor certainly plays a part in this pics’ perennial popularity; we can’t exactly say we are pining for those fashions, nor did we ever necessarily aspire to serve drinks in a grimy New York bar, but a little part of us felt empowered by a story about a women helping each other out (there is no mega cat-fight or rivalry beyond a low-level prank dealt out to the newbie) where the man, whilst a great addition, is not the be-all and end-all. A few years later another girl would go to New York to fulfil a dream of writing only to be thrown in at the deep-end of a pool in which she hadn’t even expected to dip a toe and somehow come out the other end all the better for it… but we’ll leave The Devil Wears Prada for another night. Right now we’ve got some Leanne Rhimes to dance to.