There is just something about bars that make them good settings for movies. Maybe it’s that people let down their guard when they drink, so you see more colorful characters in a bar. Maybe it’s the opportunity for sexual tension. Maybe it’s just that bars make a great scene for brawls.
“It’s just a noisy hall, where there’s a nightly brawl.”
Here is our selection of the top 8 bar flicks of all time. Feel free to add your suggestions or comment on these in the comments below.
Road House (1989)
Directed by Rowdy Herrington, Patrick Swayze comes in to clean up the Double-Duce, a brawl-infested, money-losing honki-tonk in a small Amercian town. To clean up the bar, he finds that he first has to clean up the town, which is under the extortion thumb of a the local crime boss. This movie is more known for its flying fists than for its music – but it is worth mentioning that Canadian blues-rock guitarist Jeff Healey cameos as the band playing in the road house.
Coyote Ugly (2000)
Directed by David McNally, you can call this a this cult classic. It stars Piper Perabo, Adam Garcia and Maria Bello – is a chick flick with plenty of eye candy for the guys. Coyote Ugly is the name of the road house (yes, another road house) where this tale takes place – where a young lady takes a job as a bar maid and teases the male bar patrons to make a few bucks – until she hopefully gets her big break as a world-famous songwriter.
Casablanca (1942)
Directed by Michael Curtiz, and starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, this is the classic piano bar movie – perhaps the best known bar movie of any. Bogart’s piano lounge is a haven for refugees from the tiresome war raging in Europe, and serves as the venue for intrigue, romance and anything else that walks through the door. Ironically, Casablanca is best known for the line “Play it again, Sam” – a line that was never even uttered.
Burlesque (2010)
Directed by Steven Antin, and starring the fabulous Cher and the gorgeous Christina Aguilera (and both of their amazing voices), this is the tale of an ambitious young starlet with a songbird voice who – spoiler alert! – saves the old diva’s night club, not just with her voice, but also with her clever strategy and newly-acquired legal smarts (think “air rights”). There are plenty of show scenes, with splendid costumes and choreography – and incredible vocal numbers with two such talented singers occupying the stage.
Chicago (2002)
Directed by Ron Marshall, and starring Renée Zellweger, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Richard Gere, this musical crime thriller is set in 1920′s gangster-era Chicago. Two singers, one a washed-up diva and the other a wishful starlet, both waiting on death row for killing the men in their lives, conspire to build on their new-found gangster notoriety to not only escape the gallows, but become more famous than ever singing gangster-style in bars. The musical highlight is “All that Jazz” (see the quote above, taken from the lyrics).
Cocktail (1988)
Cocktail is directed by Roger Donaldson and starring Tom Cruise, Bryan Brown and Elisabeth Shue. Like so many bar-based movies, this is the narrative of a would-be hot-shot intent on nothing other than to get his big break. The main plot variance this time around is that the protagonist is hunky Tom Cruise (eye candy for the ladies) rather than some pretty starlet.
Strange Brew (1983)
Directed by and starring Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas (The McKenzie Brothers), this flick is – wait for it – a comedy, eh? These loveable clowns from up in the Great White North (Canada) can make a bar out of any place they happen to be shooting a film, so why not in a brewery, eh? Lots to drink there, eh? If you enjoy Bob and Doug McKenzie, the SCTV characters you will recall from the 1980s, this is your kind of bar movie, eh?. Oh yeah, and lot’s of alcohol (it is a bar, after all). And a brewery, eh?
BarFly (1987)
Directed by Barbet Schroeder and starring Mickey Rourke, Faye Dunaway and Alice Krige, this is the one bar movie that actually has “bar” in its name. Kind of takes the suspense out of it. The tale, if you wish to use that word, tells about how life is a dumpster and we are all wallowing at the bottom of the septic tank , but at least we all drown in alcohol instead of sewage.
Honourable mentions
We have decided also give an honourable mention to these three not-quite-bar movies …
Saturday Night Fever (1977), for what might just feature some of the most famous dance scenes of all time, and certainly dance music, which do take place in a disco bar.
Wild Hogs (2007), because they explode a biker bar. Is that cool, or what?
From Dusk Till Dawn (1996), which we just could not leave out because the they decided to name their bar The Titty Twister.
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