Friday Night Lights

The reason Varsity Blues is so much like Friday Night Lights is b/c VB is a fictional story which was written 10 years after the true story of FNL took place in Odessa, TX in 1988.

The game faces worn by the players in FNL are genuine. The "Religion" of High School Football gave them no other choice. H.G. Bissinger spent almost an entire year with his family in 1988 in Odessa, TX. He essentially became a part of the community and team in documenting and then writing his book Friday Night Lights. He said that due to depressed economic conditions, lack of higher education, and good paying jobs, the communities in West Texas looked upon the high school football programs as saviors from reality.

This is a very dark sports movie. It's about fanaticism, the great weight of importance certain people place on sports. Sports fans often regard their teams as extensions of themselves. In "Friday Night Lights," the entire town of Odessa, Texas collectively puts their town's reputation on the shoulders of a high school football team. It's basically the same exact plot as "Varsity Blues," except a serious version of high school football in small town Texas.

One thing the movie does extremely well is taking hackneyed plots of the individual players (because it's all been done before) and putting them all in the background. So the plots play out not in a cheesy, inspirational, in-your-face way. Instead, they are just there with only as much attention as the viewer wants to put on them. The great aspects of sports are enough to keep us interested and makes the movie incredibly real.

The only character whose plot is really focused on is Boobie, the cocky running back who is injured and tries to defy his own injury. This is a plot in sports movies that has been focused on somewhat - the injured player. But never before has the pain been so real and so powerful.

This movie is heart-wrenching. Sports movies usually have so many moments of redemption and cheesy happiness that often feel false. This movie only has one such moment and it is incredibly powerful. Nothing about this movie is Hollywood. Billy Bob Thorton gives a great, understated performance as the coach, a man who is simply internal, who can do nothing but sit back and watch events unfold, knowing full well the impact that each game has on himself and his family. All the actors playing the football players do a good job, especially the guy who plays Boobie.

Don't expect this movie to uplift you. But it will show you an interesting side of sports you may have never considered. And, in the end, it shows exactly what is great about sports, and it has nothing to do with winning or making a career out of the game. It's about giving all you have for a teammate.

This movie was phenomenal in every way. It had incredible performances under a great director with a fantastic story to back it up.

It tells the story of a high school football team in Texas through the course of their 1988 season. Billy Bob Thorton played the coach of the team and give the best performance I've ever seen him give. The film was directed by Peter Berg who gave it a unique film style. He managed to tell this story in a very beautiful way.

Tim McGraw gives a great debut performance of an ex-high school football player who has become the drunken abusive father of one of the players currently on the team. He was almost unrecodnizable in this role and he portrayed it well. He, and the rest of the cast for that matter deserve a lot of credit.

This is the only football film I have ever seen that has done justice to what it feels like to play football in high school. I played under Friday night lights myself, that time of my life ended just a year ago and it still holds fresh in my memory. And because of that I can tell you how accurately this film portray's the sense of brotherhood and friendship that is felt by every team, at least every good football team.

Whether you ever played under Friday night lights yourself or not anyone should be able to appreciate this film.

I just don't see how anyone who didn't read the book could follow the story at all. The book was so watered down, and the story is almost unrecognizable. We saw precious little of Booby Miles' complexity or the pressures around him over which he had no control. We saw almost nothing of Chavez, one of the very few players who actually made something of himself, or what effect the high school football experience had on his success in life. And the other players ... their personal lives were so affected by what happened that single season, and it was pretty much ignored. There was so much background about the frenzy that Mojo generated (and still generates) in Odessa that just wasn't shown.

That being said, I can see why the people in Odessa so disapproved of the book and loved the movie. The movie doesn't show the rather affectionate, yet unflattering picture that Buzz Bissinger painted of the town. Instead, it only showed the stereotypical hype of small town football. After seeing the movie, PLEASE do yourself a favor and read the book.

Lots of great actors with powerful performances throughout! Somber moments and inspirational sports story. Peter Berg is a great director for many projects I'm glad the movie was at least nominated. Even though I gave it a 7 I thoroughly enjoyed the bulk of everything that occurs.