Whatever the best sports movie ever made is, it sure as hell ain't Varsity Blues.
Yet I paid 1999 movie-theatre prices to watch this 2½-star James Van Der Beek vehicle when it came out and if pops up on late-night TV, like it did last night on City TV, I'm like Milhouse after Bart Simpson painted new dividing lines in the teachers' parking lot, making each space one foot narrower, yet indistinguisable to the naked eye -- I fear to watch, yet I cannot turn away.
(By the way, I graduated from high school 10 years ago this month. At the same stage in his life, my dad had a business, owned his own home and had two children. And I'm staying up to all hours watching movies starring James Friggin' Van Der Beek.)
What makes it so hard to turn away from is that illustrates how the teen sex romp / teen angst drama / scatological sports comedy genre hasn't evolved through the years. In the teen genre, Better Off Dead, Say Anything or Napoleon Dynamite are rare accidents.
Whether it's The Last American Virgin in the early '80s or The Girl Next Door two years ago, the story never changes: Nice guy learns to shed his insecurity and gets the girl who seems way out of his league. Roll credits.
After all, there's no need for this type of movie to evolve -- there's always a market of teenagers (and cough, 29-year-old teenagers) who don't have mortgages and families and thus have money and time to waste on this. And Varsity Blues is so unrepentant about belonging to this that it makes it endearing: this isn't Remember The Titans, which is a paint-by-numbers football flick masquerading as a message about race relations and it sure as hell isn't Friday Night Lights, which is basically Varsity Blues with the light tone taken out and indie-film cinematography. In a word, it's better, since it's happy to be no-brow.
Bill Simmons has delineated the criteria for an enjoyable sports movie. It goes something like this: repeat watchability, quotability and stock characters that embody ever cinematic cliché known to man. The temptress (Ali Larter's cheerleader character). The party animal (Scott Caan.) The fat guy (Ron Lester). The jerk coach (Jon Voight). The star player (Paul Walker) and his challenger (our man Van Der Beek) who come into conflict, but develop a friendship.
The only deviation is that the female killjoy character (played by Amy Smart) is also the love interest who puts the protagonist at odds with the order of the herd, since she's the quarterback's sister and doesn't want any part in this football nonsense. Whoa, didn't see that coming. Usually they pair her up with some late-'80s yuppie jerk (Rene Russo in Major League), or have her dating one of the other players (Halle Berry in The Program).
Anyway, it rolls along -- "surprisingly enjoyable, even when you anticipate its every move," according to All Movie.com -- with the requisite amount of football action, dimwitted dialogue and enough gratuitous sex and violence to make you nostalgic for the high school experience you imagine all the cool kids had while you stayed home and played NHL 94 until the wee hours. (Or am I projecting?) Friends come into conflict, there's a big scene, and the team wins the big game at the end with a deus ex machina that probably did spew from the Powerbook of the laziest Hollywood hack. The winning touchdown comes on a trick play that even the 2005 Green Bay Packers defence could have stopped six times out of 10.
However, there is a scene that shows the team practising the play it uses to win the big game. At least it gives the sports fans watching that much credit for knowing a little about the game.
Incidentally, if you're wondering what the best sports movies are, the top three are Bull Durham, North Dallas Forty and Slap Shot. And no, this is not up for negotiation.
Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.
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