Varsity Blues

There was a spate of high school movies in 1999, and I'll start with Varsity Blues, which was before Friday Night Lights, but was pretty much overshadowed by that film and TV series.

The film, directed by Brian Robbins, is a pretty much a by-the-numbers football story. James Van Der Beek, who was then hot with the debut of Dawson's Creek, plays the back-up quarterback on a Texas high school football team coached by the megalomaniac Jon Voight (who is scary good). Van Der Beek loves football when it's "pure," and prefers to read Kurt Vonnegut to the playbook. Of course the star quarterback is injured (Paul Walker, in any early role) and Van Der Beek comes off the bench, butts heads with Voight, and leads the team to victory by using trick plays.

Varsity Blues scratched at the surface of what Friday Night Lights would delve deep into--that small towns in Texas live for football because there's nothing else to do, they venerate these kids out of proportion, and football is the ticket out of these shit-hole towns for teenagers. It is for the girls, too. Ali Larter plays the cheerleader who dates Walker until he's injured. Once Van Der Beek is the starter, she sets her eyes on him, and in the film's most notorious scene, attempts to seduce him wearing a bikini of whipped cream (as Robbins notes in the extras, it is really shaving cream--whipped cream melts too fast).

Ostensibly a comedy, Varsity Blues tries to break free of the cliches but doesn't succeed. There's a fat guy (Ron Lester, who would later lose over 300 pounds but die in his forties), the black guy, and the rebel (Scott Caan, son of James, in one of his first major roles). There's a running gag about Van Der Beek's younger brother, who is trying different religions, including Nation of Islam. I was shocked to read that the actor who played him has been missing since for over ten years.

What could have been a more interesting film wallows in the cliches of football movies. Is there any doubt that the team would win, or that Voight would get his comeuppance? There are certain pleasures in these cliches, but it's a shame that Varsity Blues settles or them.