As good a football movie as any

Rating: 7/10 (23 November 2007)

Hey, look everybody! It's the Hoosiers of football! Seriously, though, it's a decent movie so long as you remember it's just a football movie. It's in the same class as Any Given Sunday and Varsity Blues with less emphasis on teenage shenanigans and politics than those two. Friday Night Lights is more about the huge amount of pressure on the high schoolers to win the state championship. This is its main deviation from the "Hoosiers template." In Hoosiers, it felt like the characters had to win to overcome a personal challenge, to become a better person through the game. This movie takes a more realistic and depressing look at high school sports: the kids are playing either because they don't know how to do anything else, or because the entire population of their town is counting on their win for for what? Just what can this championship do for the town except encourage future generations to become football champs too? It's just a game, and a college recruiter reminds the quarterback at one point, "it's supposed to be fun." In any case, the players feel trapped in the game. It has consumed their whole lives and made them local celebrities that all the old ball players can now live through vicariously. Where other football movies try to paint a picture of life AS football, Friday Night Lights shows us several lives that have merely been interrupted by football. Many want out, a few are forced out, and life goes on.