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Friday Night Lights (2004)
Rate:
5
Viewed:
12/16
12/16:
I have now seen the most ridiculous supposedly serious high school football picture: Friday Night Lights.
There are five things I hate about it: the melodrama, the camera work, the unrealistic images, the direction, and the
ripped-off concepts from a well-known movie.
Let's be real: who the fuck cares about high school football? It has absolutely
no meaning in the grand scheme of things, and I don't give a fuck whether or not it takes place in Texas. Those who hold the
axiom "God, football, and Texas" sacred are out of their freaking minds and need to have a mental health checkup.
Oh, my goodness. The drama. Every weekend of football is a do-or-die. Win, or die. Lose, and it's the end of the world.
Oh, my goodness. Fucking win at all costs. People are nothing if the team loses. Oh, my fucking goodness. Just
win...the...fucking game. These people are so stupid. It's just a fucking high school football game. Get a life!
Just when I thought the camera work in
Any Given Sunday was the worst ever for a football film,
Friday Night Lights comes off as okay. Still, it's piss-poor. Hold the damn camera still, for Pete's sake.
I have to laugh at the idea of the setting taking place in 1988. The whole thing looks so unbelievably modern that I must
ask why they didn't give it up and made the whole thing set at the present day.
Did I watch adults pretending to be high school football players? Check out Derek Luke's body. He's so goddamn fucking
built that he looks ready to play in the NFL. Derek Luke was actually 30 years old at the time of the filming. One guy who was on
the state championship team appears 50 years old with a couple of balding spots on his head.
The football scenes look utterly ridiculous and unrealistic. I'll be surprised if these high school football kids can play like
NFL players, being physically able to execute such good-looking plays. Plus, they don't normally bleed much during a football
game.
Most of all, I'm disappointed in the direction. Because it was doing so well in terms of displaying societal pressures
that high school players face, I was actually hoping Friday Night Lights would be about the realities
to make a point that life was much bigger than football, but everybody had failed me in this regard.
As soon as it turned out to be just another Hollywood football picture with a sad ending, I had lost interest and didn't care
about what happened the rest of the way. There are many clichés, and I've gotten tired of them all. Speaking of clichés, the
more I see of them, the more Friday Night Lights is Hoosiers in disguise. So, did the filmmakers watch the
basketball picture first and then went from there to restructure the story? Is that how it really went down?
For whatever it's worth, Billy Bob Thornton and Tim McGraw have done a good job. If the attention was centered around these
two, maybe it would've been a more interesting movie. But it's been done before, from a coach
standpoint, with Al Pacino in
Any Given Sunday and Denzel Washington in
Remember the Titans and, from an
abusive father standpoint, with Dennis Hopper in Hoosiers. Hence, it's superfluous.
All in all, Friday Night Lights is a Hoosiers rip-off, leaving me suffocated with a high amount of
ridiculousness and melodrama.