Friday Night Lights Reviews

I wasn’t sure what to expect from this movie but since it has a solid reputation, I was quite eager to check it out. Eventually, sure, the directing was decent and so is the acting but, honestly, there was nothing really original here. It all depends if you're a sport movie fan or not, especially (American) football. In this case, it was even dealing with high school football which is something even more culturally related. Indeed, for an European like me, it seems rather odd to see a town getting so worked up for a high school sport team. Anyway, the interesting thing with this movie is that they didn’t only focus on the football but they also tried to develop the social aspect around the sport and it was fairly interesting. Still, at the end end of the day, it wasn’t really as deep as the makers wanted us to believe (I mean, it was directed by Peter Berg, the guy who eventually came up with ‘Battleship’ so we shouldn’t ask for too much). Eventually, since this movie was fairly well received, they decided to expand it into a TV show, which I have never seen, and it managed to last 5 seasons. To conclude, even though I thought it was slightly disappointing, it was still a decent watch and it is worth a look, especially if you like the genre.

Football movies. You either love them or hate them. Me - I don't mind watching them, I don't find them particularly interesting but I can survive watching one. This is one of the better ones that I have seen, probably because of the cast including Billy Bob Thornton. And it was enjoyable to watch.

I can imagine that there's not too many possibilities of what to include in a sports movie like this, but they made it as interesting as it could be. It's not like they just go out and play football and they win or loose. It's much more than that. I really liked the way that each of the key players in the team were explored more with their family life etc. They don't just go out and play football. And we were shown in great extent the relationships of the players to the coach, rather than him just shouting out what was to happen during the game.

I have said it before and I will say it again, Billy Bob Thornton can ace any role. In this case though, there wasn't as much to the coach as some of his other characters, but he still delivered a solid performance. It was nice to see stars like Lucas Black in this film too, another great performance from one of his earlier films. I am a huge fan of Garrett Hedlund so for me he was outstanding, I loved seeing him as one of the players. There were some other great actors in this film, some performances not as good as others. But I can settle with saying the acting in this was well above average, two thumbs up to that!

The rating would be higher for me if I really liked these football movies. It definitely gets 3 stars for the acting, amazing cast and a story more than just any other sport film would have. See it for yourself if it sounds like your kind of movie. Otherwise, if you can't stand football movies, steer clear of this. Enjoy it!