Review of Friday Night Lights (2004) by Kevin D — 08 May 2010

Ok I actually saw this movie approximately 2 years ago. If I could have gone my entire life without watching this movie again, I would die a happy man. A friend of mine mentioned that this was his favorite movie, so I immediately had to put the movie in its place. My friend was not happy with my assessment of the film so I told him I would watch it again and let him know what was so bad about the film. It was actually worse than I remembered it being.

When you first start watching the movie youâ??ll notice that all of the actors, who are playing high schoolers, are in their 30â??s. The movie only gets worse from there. The stlye of this movie is like a combination of a Paul Greengrass movie, the last 10 minutes of Magnolia, Martin Scorseseâ??s Casino, and a Nike ad. I mean all of that in a bad way. Alone, all of those references were good, other than Casino which I hated, but here all of those aspects are dragged out an make the film look terrible. This movie is quickly edited like a Greengrass film and it features unnecessary handheld camera scenes. As a result of this style, there were times where I had no idea what was going on because the camera was so frantic and went all over the place. This movie was like the last 10 minutes of Magnolia, because B-roll played over the audio the whole time. That fit perfectly in Magnolia, because before the last few minutes of Magnolia, we were treated with 3 hours of brilliant characters and storytelling and the last section really summed everything up (this movie also attempted to one-up Magnolia by having a gloomy character smile at the end, just like that blond girl did in P.T. Andersonâ??s masterpiece.). Literally this entire movie appeared like it was extra footage with either random soundbites or music playing in the background. It was a terrible way of making an entire film look. All of that ties into my Casino reference. Casino and this movie lacked a proper narrative. We were just thrown into the movie and the story was not told or presented in a clear manner. As a viewer, I felt left out from both Casino and Friday Night Lights. Finally, unnecessary slow motion scenes just made the appearance of this film look ridiculous. Another visual problem that made the film look terrible was the lack of transitions in the editing process. As a result, interview scenes, football playing scenes, and family scenes all looked and felt the same. I was taken out of a comfort zone by this because those scenes should have looked differently and since the camera was constantly cutting, they would have flowed to together a lot better had there been transitions.

This movie could not find a sports cliché that it did not like. Even though this movie was based on a true team, it looks and feels like every other football movie: the â??inspirationalâ?? and predictable halftime speech, a star player getting injured, a guy nobody knows that steps up, and the small town feel that we already saw in Remember the Titans.

Tim Mcgrawâ??s work in this movie was unintentionally funny. His acting was so over the top and his character was ridiculous. During the course of this movie, he knocked his son up and down the football field, he punched his son while the kid was wearing a helmet, he duct taped his son's hands together (The Comebacks made fun of that scene in hilarious fashion), he kicked out a window in his car, and he threw his high school super bowl ring out of the car window. I think McGraw missed out on a Golden Globe nod for Best Supporting actor in a comedy. He provided plenty of laughs. Unfortunately, I donâ??t think his character was meant to be funny. I also love how McGraw ranges from being a crazy drunk to being properly functional and loving. Like many things in this movie, he too did not make any sense.

This movie was supposed to be about a team, yet I got no team vibes because they profiled the same 3 kids over and over again. The most annoying part about that is that instead of providing characterization about the players on the team, director Peter Berg thought the audience would learn about the characters if he constantly zoomed into their faces and gave them face time. I really learned nothing about the supposed main characters in this movie. The characters in this movie truly lacked any emotion or personality. For instance, one of the characters, Mike, who claimed to â??loveâ?? football had a stoic face throughout the whole film. You wonâ??t get the audience into the film by making a guy like that the main character.

One of the worst aspects of this movie was the sound editing. The main setting of the movie is a giant football stadium that is allegedly attended by rabid football fans. Surprisingly, it is impossible to hear the fans in between plays and during a few crucial moments. Thatâ??s pretty ridiculous and the guy who did the sound editing for this movie should lose his job. This movie also has plenty of useless scenes, such as a few scenes that throw the viewer halfway through a conversation we know nothing about and useless party scenes, and a scene where a few players are shooting targets with a shotgun. These scenes did not resonate with the rest of the movie.

Maybe this movie was bad because Connie Britton had so little to do. Like in the tv show version of this, Britton plays the wife of the football coach. She has like 3 lines here, but she is a featured actor on the tv show. One scene that is hysterical was a coin flip scene. It is so overdramatic and jokingly dragged out that it is simply amazing. Director Peter Berg really overdoes himself in that scene by playing dramatic music and using heavy doses of slow motion.

The best part of this movie took place when Billy Bob Thornton took one look at his star player after he suffered a leg injury and suddenly proclaimed, â??Heâ??s done.â?? The style started to succeed during the last half of the movie, but by then it was too late. This movie is a mess but it is watchable. It would be the perfect film to use when teaching a lesson on How Not To Make a Movie.

I did not see why it was necessary to tell the story of this movie, if you even want to call it a story, on the big screen or even in a book for that matter. To me, this movie felt insignificant: it was about a mediocre team with no real star player and itâ??s not like the team did anything special. Obviously, this story had to mean something to the writers of the non-fiction book, but the passion they had for the subject matter did not translate to the screen and itâ??s a damn shame that one manâ??s gold got put in the hands of Peter Berg. Heâ??s such a horrible director (Very Bad Things, The Kingdom) and he lived up to his reputation here.