Varsity Blues
It's that all-important MTV demographic that sets producers' eyes blurry with avarice, so who better to craft a film than MTV? It would seem practically anyone, given the Joe's Apartment debacle, but this time the numbers indicate they got it right. And to be fair, 16 year olds certainly aren't stupid. While box office gold doesn't equal quality, the kids won't flock to a movie if there isn't something there.
In the case of Varsity Blues, it has everything to get a high schooler's attention: buff boys, whip cream bikinis and the sense of vindication that comes from telling your parents, teachers and coaches where to stick it. And while Varsity Blues doesn't see its characters as accurately as The Breakfast Club, there's enough honesty to get the workaday plot off the ground.
In Texas, football is more than a sport - it's a religion. Must be all that sun addling their brains. Varsity Blues takes place in the kind of town where high school is the pinnacle of everyone's existence, where middle-aged men relive their glory days on the gridiron by grafting their unfulfilled dreams onto their sons, who play football because that's what you do in West Caanan, and those boys will grow up to manage the local Wal-Mart and enroll their own boys in pee-wee football. The best a girl can hope for is to cheerlead, or at least date the star quarterback, and the highest goal for any boy is to play for the team.
Any boy, that is, except for Mox. Like any red-blooded Texan he plays football, but his dream is to get into Brown on an academic scholarship - he reads "Slaughterhouse Five" while sitting on the bench. He's a perennially nice guy, second-string until Lance, the starting quarterback, blows out his knee during a crucial game. The knee was weakened by repeated pre-game shots of steroids, the kind of clear-eyed detail that makes Varsity Blues better than your average high school football movie. To its credit, Varsity Blues is more interested in questioning the rabid devotion to what is essentially a meaningless game than celebrating it.
For the most part, that is. While Varsity Blues had the potential to make a stronger statement, the film plays it safe, coming back around to the inevitable Final Play during the crucial championship game at the end. The best moments come from the details, like the way Mox struggles with the local fame thrust upon him and the tension in his relationships with his girlfriend and his coach.
Jon Voight is surprisingly effective as the overly-driven coach, the man for whom winning a 23rd division championship is more important than the lives or ligaments of his team. Voight plays Coach Kilmer like Machiavelli with a clipboard, and his performance is strong enough to give the team's rebellion meaning. Ron Lester also generally plays against stereotype as the enormous Billy Bob, and Tiffany Love makes the girl who tries to seduce Mox seem more desperate to escape the town than simply score with the golden boy.
While all this sounds solid, the movie does have its flaws, chiefly in the generally predictable plot and the broad attempts at comedy. The sex-ed teacher implausibly strips at a local bar the boys are mysteriously let into, and the team gets away with far more drinking and lawlessness than seems likely - though the cops might look the other way when the starting lineup are boozing at a house party, would they really ignore the insults and theft of their cruiser?
Still, that's the sort of raunch and rebellion most high schoolers dream of, so Varsity Blues plays right into their fantasies. The film is better than I expected due to the decent performances and flashes of honesty, and while anyone over the age of 20 will be mildly entertained and nothing more, I'm sure the demographic the film is aimed at will get a kick out of it.
- Jared O'Connor
MOVIES
All Content © 1997, 1998 Jared O'Connor and Michael Baker