Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

2/1/14. For someone doesn't watch sports of any kind I always end up watching all the movies about sports. And, if they are done well, I end up loving them to death, like this one. What an excellent look at the American Religion of Sports! It really shows how disillusioned men stuck in their own lives live through the successes and failures of their sons, especially on the playing field. Such men are worse than stage mothers. Maybe they should have a term like "Sports Fathers." You know what I mean. Voight was excellent as the ultimate bullying coach, and Van Der Beek as the high school senior who is a decent guy who is wise beyond his years. Do catch this one in which Paul Walker was the cute quarterback who has it all until he gets injured. I loved this movie!

A back-up quarterback (James VanDerBeek) is chosen to lead a Texas football team to victory after the star quarterback (Paul Walker) is injured.I was never a football player. I was not fro ma town that cared about high school football. And I did not particularly care about the football team. Heck, I do not even happen to remember a single person who played on our school's team. So I do not exactly identify with anyone in this movie.And yet, it happens to be pretty good. VanDerBeek does not stray too far from Dawson, which is how we like him best. Paul Walker is here, which is great, since his legacy is pretty much only "Fast and Furious". And Jon Voight is sort of a jerk, which is exactly how I imagine he is in real life.

It's West Canaan, Texas and high school football is king. Pressure is intense. John Moxon (James Van Der Beek) is the backup quarterback who spends his time in the game reading a book. Coach Bud Kilmer (Jon Voight) hates his attitude and berates him for it. His girlfriend Julie Harbor (Amy Smart) is the sister of the star quarterback Lance (Paul Walker). Offensive lineman Billy Bob (Ron Lester) passes out and Lance gets hurt being sacked. John Moxon goes into the game, throws out the playbook and wins the game. Lance is out and his future is in doubt. Lance' girlfriend Darcy Sears (Ali Larter) starts trying to get Moxon. Soon Moxon's success starts to change him into a local star.This is basically the same plot points as 'Friday Night Lights'. The difference is that this movie keeps trying to play the outlandish for comedy. The movie misunderstands the inherit dark drama and tries to make a funny high school comedy out of it. The two clash and doesn't work together at all. This could have been a very good movie and spawn a TV show.

Varsity Blues is about as predictable a movie as you will ever see. It's a movie about high school football which is pretty much like every other movie about high school football. Every cliché of the genre is here. The overbearing coach. The football-obsessed town. The parents living vicariously through their children. The players who see football as their only means of escape. The intellectual player who realizes there's more to life than football. The cheerleader who just wants to be with the star, whoever the star may be at a given moment. The big, fat guy who's there for comic relief. The injury that changes everything. The big game at the end. Did I miss any? Oh yes, of course, the biggest cliché of all...Texas. Where else would you set a movie about a town where high school football is the only thing that matters?So you know what you're in for with this movie. Nothing is going to surprise you here. But as predictable and formulaic as it is Varsity Blues still provides reasonably decent entertainment. The characters may all be clichéd but a number of them still manage to be compelling. James Van Der Beek is the star of the movie, if not the football team. He plays the intellectual backup quarterback, Mox, a guy who plays football not because he wants to but because it is what he is expected to do. Mox's situation changes, how Mox responds to that change is the crux of the movie's rather simple story. Van Der Beek's performance is by no means extraordinary but for this movie it works perfectly fine. He creates a character we can relate to and root for. And Jon Voight, playing the thoroughly detestable Coach Bud Kilmer, does an excellent job creating a character we can despise and root against. Kilmer is a hard-driving jerk, a man who cares only about winning football games. He cares not how many young bodies he must destroy to win another district championship. The conflict between Mox, who gets what life is really about, and Kilmer, who most certainly does not, is quite dramatic. And if a high school football movie can give you some good drama that's really all you can ask. There is nothing spectacular about Varsity Blues. There is nothing that really sets it apart from all the other movies of its type you have already seen. But it is at least entertaining enough to be worth your while. There are good dramatic moments, a few good laughs, some compelling characters. And some rather inventively used whipped cream. It may not rise above its genre but for what it is, and all it was ever meant to be, Varsity Blues is a success.