[A] lifestyle advertisement for the noxious small-town culture that turns high-school football players into local heroes, no matter what price these young men have to pay.
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10/08/04
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Friday Night Lights (2004)
81
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Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:162
Fresh:132
Rotten:30
Average Rating:7.2/10
Consensus: An acute survey of the football-obsessed heartland that succeeds as both a stirring drama and a rousing sports movie.
Theatrical Release:Oct 8, 2004 Wide
Box Office: $61,188,085
Synopsis: From OscarŽ-winning producer Brian Grazer and Imagine Entertainment and based on the best-selling book about high school football by H.G. Bissinger, Friday Night Lights chronicles the entire 1988... [More]
Starring: Billy Bob Thornton, Tim McGraw, Derek Luke, Jay Hernandez
Director: Peter Berg
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Reviews for Friday Night Lights
Profoundly upsetting and pointed in its criticism, it's concerned not just with football, but with the people who play it and the people it affects.
10/07/04
Berg fashions a Spike Lee-esque prism through which he sheds light on the game, though Berg hasn't so much got game as he got highlight.
10/07/04
Football here serves as the fulcrum of an entire society, in which everything... is distilled into the pressure cooker of fourth and long at the 35.
10/07/04
One of the best football movies ever.
10/07/04
Top CriticAs you watch this film, you gradually begin to realize that it's not delivering the emotional highs of the genre, and is going to a different place entirely.
10/07/04
An emotionally fulfilling experience.
10/07/04
Top CriticBy abandoning all attempts to explore the town's obsession with the game, opting instead for sports-movie cliches and more slow-motion tackling, the filmmakers fall short of the goal line.
10/07/04
Always slick and pumped up, Friday Night Lights is real enough around the edges to hold our attention even if it sacrifices accuracy for storytelling ease.
10/07/04
Top CriticAs a survey of the anti-intellectualism and rage at the heart of the heartland, it burns with intelligence and energy.
10/07/04
A hard-hitting, fast-paced, stirring film.
10/07/04
Top CriticFriday Night Lights doesn't capture the essence of H.G. Bissinger's bestselling book, but it does embody the spirit of Texas high school football.
10/07/04
Top CriticFriday Night Lights is a razzle-dazzle movie about a Texas town and what their win-at-all costs ethic does to the young men on the high-school football team.
10/07/04
Peter Berg directs this Texas high school football extravaganza in a tough, gritty style that gives it an unusually fine and vivid sense of place.
10/07/04
Top CriticNot a rah-rah Remember the Titans-style tribute to the excitement of football. ... Even in the movie's happiest sequences, a sense of melancholia seems to be lurking nearby.
10/07/04
While its apparent effort to be both a critique and a reverential homage leaves lingering doubts, what's unquestionable is the high quality of the filmmaking on display.
10/07/04
The movie is full of both crushing disappointment and hope, resignation and joy, ugliness and great beauty.
10/07/04
Top CriticIn a movie where the players are ordered to give 110 percent, Berg holds back.
10/07/04
If you're not a football fan, Friday Night Lights won't make you one, but if you are, it will give you a good deal more to think about than your average gridiron flick.
10/07/04
Friday Night Lights is a disappointment in the end because it could have been so much more.
10/07/04
Latest News for Friday Night Lights
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June 05, 2007:
Scott Porter Signs On for a "Speed Racer" Role
Fans of TV's "Friday Night Lights" may be familiar with actor Scott Porter. Movie fans will see him in next year's "Speed Racer" adaptation. More...
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