Such irreverent exuberance fills the new Paramount Pictures film, Varsity Blues, which premiered on January 15. The movie adroitly explores the American obsession with the realm of sports. It examines and critiques the impact of athletics on the lives of ordinary people in West Canaan, Texas, which serves as a caricature of the "picture-perfect" small town. West Canaan is a place where everybody knows your name, a place where everyone in town has nothing better to do each weekend than go to the local high school football game, a place where the girls flutter at every word of the high school quarterback.
Brian Robbins directs and Dawson's Creek's James Van Der Beek stars as Jonathon Moxon, the non-conformist second-string quarterback on the West Canaan Coyotes. Jon Voight co-stars as the overzealous football coach Bud Kilmer, who, in his 35th year as head coach of the West Canaan high school football team, is willing to sacrifice even the well-being of his players in order to reel in a 23rd division title for the school. Uncompromising and omnipotent, Coach Kilmer is the object of town-wide deification, as long as his team continues to win. This pressure drives Kilmer to any lengths to win the next title and earn the adulation and adoration of the town.
Paul Walker plays Lance Harbor, the starting all-state quarterback who dates the lead cheerleader, Darcy (Ali Larter), and is lionized to the point of having his own billboard in the middle of the town. But when Lance is put out of commission with a season-ending injury, Jon Moxon, who reads novels instead of football plays while on the bench and would rather pass the ball than perform the running plays demanded by his intractable coach, steps up and proves to be the savior of the team, and thus, the town's new golden boy.
Despite his sudden elevation, Moxon stays true to his character, never allowing his success to overwhelm his modest demeanor. He even resists Darcy's tempting advances (whipped cream bikinis), and, once Lance is in the hospital, Moxon is the only one on the entire football team to visit him. If this film is Van Der Beek's vehicle to stardom, he seems to have chosen a character with remarkably few chinks in his armor.
Varsity Blues is, in part, a film about love, or at least the superficiality of high school romance. Darcy's dream is to leave West Canaan on the arms of a quarterback: she has been Lance Harbor's girlfriend only since he became the starter. After Lance's injury, his football scholarship to Florida State and, in Darcy's eyes, his entire future, are put into jeopardy. In the injury's aftermath, Larter's character crumbles from confident pep rally queen into shameless flirt -- she believes her goal of leaving West Canaan to be shattered by Lance's injury, and that her only hope is now Jon Moxon, whose values do not allow him to take advantage of her.
Contrasted with the head cheerleader is Lance's sister, Jules Harbor (Amy Smart), who is also (surprise!) Moxon's girlfriend. Jules seems to be the only person in town not allowing football to consume her; the only person who loves Moxon for being honest and caring, not for his football achievements and the hoopla surrounding them.
Rounding out the cast is Ron Lester as Billy Bob, the strong, stupendously stout, and sensitive lineman for the Coyotes. He is a fun-loving personality who has always given his all for the good of the team -- and so is the perfect victim for the tyranny of Coach Kilmer. For Billy Bob, football is everything, and Voight's sadistic character exploits this dedication ruthlessly. His character is a stereotype, but Lester manages to bring a sort of pathetic dignity to the part, so one cannot help liking him in his revelry, and sympathizing with him in his time of need.
At the center of the drama, though, is the town of West Canaan, where all the adults seem to be caught in a gigantic time warp, reliving their glory days on the football field when they were high school kids under Kilmer. The fathers of Lance Harbor and Jon Moxon are both obviously living vicariously through their children, because they see a better version of themselves made real in their children's success. In one scene, one challenges the other to a receiving contest. Lance's father catches the ball, Moxon's father does not, and the taunts that follow blur the line between adults and adolescents. Finally, in a symbolic fit of rage, Moxon shows his disgust with the town and its obsession by pegging his father in the head.
It is Moxon's sense of perspective, portrayed in able if unspectacular fashion by teen idol Van Der Beek, that keeps the football-centered movie from turning into a parade of on-field action shots. Ultimately, of course, Varsity Blues is a film about winning a high school pigskin championship, but when his character earns acceptance to Brown University and his father seems to care more about the next week's game, Van Der Beek's outrage reminds us that there is more to life than West Canaan's obsession with its young athletes.
Overall, Varsity Blues provides a surprisingly fresh and critical view of the obsession with sports in American culture. The movie raises itself above the level of a pointless teen soap opera movie or rah-rah cliché-ridden sports-flick. Rather, it entertains for a couple of hours with a solid cast and an air of exuberant fun - the appropriate atmosphere for an original movie.