Varsity Blues

So everyone loves football, right? Professional, college, high school, Pee-Wee, it doesn't matter, fans love their pigskin. How about little towns dotted across America that live and die with their high school football teams? I'm looking at you, Texas, but there are obviously others. How about a guilty pleasure look at a small Texas town like that. Yep, it's a lousy movie, but I remember it fondly, 1999's Varsity Blues.

In the Texas town of West Canaan, coach Bud Kilmer (Jon Voight) reigns above all else. In his 30-plus years on the sidelines of the West Canaan High School football team, Kilmer has won 22 district championships and two state championships to the point he is a local hero that can do no wrong. Gunning for his 23rd district title, Kilmer seems to have the perfect team to pull it off, especially with Florida State-bound quarterback Lance Harper (Paul Walker) at the helm. But with his team rolling and the end of the season in sight, Lance goes down a horrific knee injury, forcing backup quarterback Johnny 'Mox' Moxon (James Van Der Beek) to step in at QB. Mox doesn't think much of Kilmer's bullying, manipulative ways and buckles at any sort of authority. How will the season come to an end? Can coach and backup quarterback figure something out in time?

When this movie from director Brian Robbins came out in 1999, I was the ripe old age of 14. I was a freshman in high school, and although I didn't see it in theaters, I clearly remember watching it on VHS/DVD when it came out. Is it a good movie? Hell no, it's the definition of a guilty pleasure. For me, there's a bit of nostalgia in it now some 14 years later. It plays like one big cliche -- one piled on top of each other -- but it is entertaining throughout. From MTV Films, it is a sports movie aimed clearly at teenagers. We get lots of crazy high school shenanigans from football game on Friday nights to postgame drinking parties, the immaculately cool QB, the slutty head cheerleader, the misused black running back, the crazy receiver, and the general goofiness of high school. It's not a great script, resorting back to cliches, the genre conventions of the sports/underdog movie.

So go figure then.........but I like the movie just the same. The shame is there's some real potential for a legitimately good movie. I call that movie 2004's Friday Night Lights, the true story of the Odessa-Permian football team during the 1988 season. Where 'Night' delivers, 'Varsity' almost gets there. In telling the story of a small town that lives and dies each week with its football team, we get some spooky, realistic glimpses of a town bordering on crazy. Voight chews the scenery like nobody's business (and does it well), ruling West Canaan with an iron fist because...........well, because he wins football games. The town shuts down for Friday night games, the players are heroes around town, fathers who used to play for Kilmer now live vicariously through their sons, and the weight of a town rests on their shoulders. It's all a little too much in execution, lacking a little thing called subtlety, but the potential is there for the picking.

Rewatching this movie for the first time in years, I came away with a new opinion on 'Varsity.' I've never been a huge fan of Van Der Beek -- I avoided Dawson's Creek like the plague for years -- but his leading part as very intelligent but very rebellious backup QB Johnny Moxon is one of the most unlikable lead characters I can think of in a movie. I guess we're supposed to be rooting for him, but he comes across as this pseudo-intellectual, preppy doofus who wants out of West Canaan. He's overly confident to the point of being cocky, and I was never really in his corner. Thrust into the starting QB position, it seems fair that any high schooler would embrace the spotlight. Sound fair? Yep, but star QB or maligned backup, I never actually liked the character..........so it's got that going for it. His scenes with girlfriend, Jules (Amy Smart), also provides some low-quality, painful after school special-esque scenes.

Thankfully, the rest of the cast picks up the slack. They're all ultra-cliched parts that could be cardboard cutouts from other sports movies, but what are you expecting from an MTV Films football flick? Walker shows that in 2013, he has significantly improved as an actor since 1999. The other players include Billy Bob (Ron Lester), the morbidly obese but fun-loving booze machine offensive lineman with concussions, Wendell (Eliel Swinton), the talented running back who Kilmer doesn't let score because he's black, and Tweeder (Scott Caan), the boozing, sex-obsessed, goofy, crazy screw-up and star wide receiver. Also look for Ali Larter as the slutty cheerleader (and her infamous whip cream bikini), Thomas F. Duffy as Mox's football-obsessed father, and Tonie Perensky as Miss Davis, the sex ed teacher with a secret. 

If I didn't know better -- and that's highly debatable -- I'd say looking back on the review that I'm not much of a fan the classic film that is Varsity Blues. That isn't true of course. Yes, the football scenes are laughable with some awfully dumb decisions made. It's easy to look past that though. We need an excuse to have a slow-motion football scene set to Foo Fighter's My Hero. Stupid? Yes. Awesome? FOO FIGHTERS! SLOW MOTION!  It's all ridiculous, capping with an expertly well-written 'Where does everyone end up?' narration. That's sarcasm by the way. It's an awful movie, but a fun one.

Varsity Blues (1999): ** 1/2 /****