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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 made:
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 in 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 unrealistic. I'll be surprised if these high school
kids can play like NFL players, being physically able to execute such good-looking plays. Plus, they don't
normally bleed much during a game.
Most of all, I'm disappointed in the direction. Because Friday Night Lights was doing so well in terms of
displaying societal pressures that high school players face, I hoped it 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 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 the high amount of ridiculousness and melodrama.