Friday Night Lights (Widescreen Edition)
by Peter Berg
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Actor: Billy Bob Thornton, Derek Luke, Garrett Hedlund, Jay Hernandez, Lucas BlackDirector: Peter Berg
Brand: THORNTON,BILLY BOB
Writer: Peter Berg
Producer: Brian Grazer
Producer: David Bernardi
Producer: David Hudgins
Producer: James Whitaker
Writer: Buzz Bissinger
Writer: David Aaron Cohen
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 5.1; Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; French (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo; Spanish (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo
Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 118 minutes
Published: 2005-01-01
DVD Release Date: 2005-01-18
Audience Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: Universal Studios
DVD Reviews of Friday Night Lights (Widescreen Edition)
DVD Review: Plodding Sequences, Ending, Marr Otherwise Interesting Drama
Summary: 3 Stars
"Friday Night Lights" is a great movie. Not in terms of what happens, or how it happens, but in terms of acting and story line. The movie starts off promisingly enough, and it starts to live up to expectations. Not soon after that, though, the movie starts to drag in parts. Normally this is not problem. All movies do this. From great movies like "Garden State" (in the scene where they bury the hamster) and terrible movies like "I, Robot" (the entire first half). But with this movie it doesn't just drag for a minute or two. It drags...and drags...and drags for about ten minutes. There are aspects of the movie that are left unexplained, like that one kid's mother. All throughout the movie, people keep going up to him and asking "How's yer mom doing?" and he either says fine or she'll be dying soon. For a while in the second half, we are led to believe she has terrets syndrome when she starts shouting and cursing at her TV screen. But that wouldn't cause her to be sick, is the thing. We all have some form of terrets. When we get mad...when Carl's Jr. puts out more of those "dumb guy" commercials, or when they outlaw those Paris Hilton ones. There are other parts of the movie that are nauseating, in all senses. This could be a perfectly good adult sports drama, but, alas, the movie had to appeal to teenagers by adding constant references to "getting laid" and doing drugs. Another thing that made me want to vomit was the camera work. It's not that it wasn't good, it was great, it was just a little too pretensious. The handheld camera technique worked in "Snatch", but not here. The picture comes off herky jerky and a little ugly. But, there are many more great aspects about the movie than there are bad. The acting is great, and some of the football scenes are truly intense, especially the last one, even though we all know what will happen. The end is one thing that brings this movie down from five star level. As we all think the team will win and we get ourselves geared up for it, they end up losing. I guess it is my fault because I didn't know the end already, but it was still a major let down. Director Peter Berg is much better at staging the more subdued scenes, such as two character talking. He falters, however, in scenes of cringe inducing sports violence that just make the movie a little better, yet a little harder to watch. Berg does stage one hilarious scene in a parking lot of the local drug store involving star Billy Bob Thorton, his wife and his daughter. This is not a suprise, since Berg's past credits include "The Rundown", and action-comedy, and "Very Bad Things", a very dark comedy. "Friday Night Lights" is an interesting drama, but there are a few too many scenes that try to be serious but instead are funny. Names of characters, like my good friend Boobie Miles, will cause laughs between pre-teens 10-12, probably. This is not a great movie, or at times even a good one, but it gets the job done in an entertaining, efficient way. It will appeal mostly to sports jocks, and maybe to their unfortunate girlfriends, wives, or significant others that they drag to this movie. I usually like any kind of movie, and I also assumed that I would like this one. I saw the first "Bridget Jones" the same day as I saw "Collateral" and loved them both. I thought that I may as well give this a try, even if the previews didn't make it look to great. While this movie is better than something like "Hoosiers", it's not as good as, say, "Million Dollar Baby". The ending of this one will leave you in the same, dark place that "M$B" left you, and it isn't sugar coated and cutsey like "Hoosiers" was. At times, "Friday Night Lights" takes itself a little too seriously. Scenes where the team practices feel like comic relief from the serious and stressfull other points of the movie. When a character cries, the acting in that scene is so overdone that one can't help but laugh.
Thortan plays coach Gary Gaines, who has recently moved to Odessa, Texas to escape his losing streak. He starts the season anew, and he is hopeful with his many new players. Some, like Boobie (Derek Luke), are overly pompus. Others, like Don Billingsley (Garrett Hedlund), are abuses at home. Don is abused by his father, Charles Billingsley (Tim McGraw), who used to play for the same team as Don is now playing on. Charles wants Don to be what he could never be: great. Don resents him for that, and as a result, Charles gets drunk and yells at and hits him alot. Gaines teaches the kids how to respect their fellow teammates, and the movie follows that same old cliche ridden script. The team plays through the semi-finals, the finals, and finally makes it to the championship. This happens over a two hour five minute time span, and at times the movie feels overlong. It feels about 20 minutes too long. Usually, sports movies use their time wisely, there fore they are never that long. This particular film wastes some time (45 minutes or so) detailing how the players live, yet oddly, the characters are incredibly underdeveloped.
The movie takes a true story and spins it into a slightly fictional tale, one that makes it not more interesting, but more eccentric, in a strange way. The characters are never fully developed, and as the movie progresses we keep thinking that they will be developed more, or at least in fuller detail. Unfortunately, that never happens, and we are left on our own to figure something out about these characters. Not every single one is not developed. Gaines, Boobie, Charles, Don, and Gaines' wife are all fully developed. That will have to do, though, since nothing else in the movie, or anyone else for that matter, is explained that well. This movie is a dissapointment because it could have been so much more. So much more dramtic, so much more funny, so much more game oriented. Oh. Sorry. The movie is game oriented, and fatally so. The film, after a while, begins to feel like a bunch of different games and practices strung together with placement titles on the bottom of the screen. It probably feels like this because the movie really is just a bunch of games and practices after a while. "Friday Night Lights" shows just how obsessed this town is with its games, and it does it well with montages of stores with signs that read "Gone To The Game", and how it shows the packed stadiums is truly breathtaking. "Friday Night Lights" is well done in so many ways. Too many to mention. But it is also fatally flawed in just as many ways. Sad, in a way, since this movie had real potential. Real, genuine, special potential that it squanders mostly in its last half hour. Sorry Billy Bob, you were better in "Bad Santa".
Description of Friday Night Lights (Widescreen Edition)
Chronicles a football season in Odessa, Texas, a depressed All-American town that lives and dies with the fortunes of its high school football team.Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: PG13
Release Date: 23-MAY-2006
Media Type: DVD
Based on the perennial nonfiction bestseller by H.G. Bissinger, Friday Night Lights looks at high school football in the harsh light of reality, finding heart and hardness while stirring our emotions. Actor-director Peter Berg (Very Bad Things, The Rundown) is Bissinger's cousin; he knows the material well, and understands how an obsession with winning turns high school kids into somber, over-pressured gladiators--expendable soldiers in a community war against shame and obscurity. The fact-based story focuses on the 1988 football season of Odessa-Permian high school in West Texas, and as a fast-paced sports movie, Berg delivers the goods with a rousing, frenetically styled crowd-pleaser. But there's darkness in this tale of weary underdogs, including an abusive father (well-played by country music star Tim McGraw), threatening townsfolk, an injured star running back (Derek Luke), a tormented quarterback (Lucas Black), and the melancholy coach (Billy Bob Thornton) who takes his team to the finals. Berg's film could use less flashy cutting and more drama to support its gridiron intensity, but Friday Night Lights offers a refreshing alternative to the conventional sports movie, and makes a perfect triple-feature with the equally exciting documentaries Go Tigers! and The Last Game. --Jeff Shannon
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