The anticipation for Friday Night Lights is not only because it is one of the first football movies to hit the big screen in a long time, but because this is the story considered “one of the greatest sports stories of all time” by Sports Illustrated. That is a lot to live up to for a movie, especially one that is going to have to stretch to reach anything larger than its target audience.
Based on the H.G. Bissinger bestseller “Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team and a Dream” the movie takes us to Odessa, Texas telling you the story of the Permian Panthers and their 1988 high school football season.
Gary Gaines (Thornton) takes his small team, led by Boobie Miles (Luke), a cocky running back whose legs move just as fast as his mouth until he suffers a knee injury in the first game of the season and the football crazed town of Odessa starts to put the pressure on Gaines as a State Championship is considered the most important thing in a young man’s life.
As the team struggles to fight for a spot in the playoffs audiences get very little more than just that.
Friday Night Lights is a football movie, make no mistake about that. Once you get your early introduction to the characters you better remember them well because for the majority of the movie you will be referring to them by number and last name.
Throughout the first hour and a half of the film you are made to sit through build up for the awesome final 30 minutes that make the movie worthwhile. This initial 75 percent of the movie is just a means to an end as all the drama and emotion is reserved for the final portion of the movie.
Whether this film will be something non-football fans will enjoy that is really a coin toss, considering the emotion in the final minutes is too good for anyone to be disappointed but the football focused beginning offers just enough to keep even avid football fans from nodding off.
This is not Varsity Blues and you won’t be treated to Ali Larter in a whipped cream bikini, instead you get a very serious movie that takes a look at both sides of the coin in considering whether the lengths these kids are pushed and willing to go to achieve the ultimate dream is inspired or absolutely mad.
With all things considered, Friday Night Lights will be a massive hit for its target audience, but beyond that this one may fall incomplete.
