Varsity Blues bear comparison with two other football related films. One is The
Last Picture Show set some 50 years before the action of this film. Not much has
changed in Texas in the passing years.
The second is another high school football classic All The Right Moves with Tom Cruise. Cruise and star James VanDerBeek are both 18 and about to graduate frm high school.
The scholarship that Cruise gets from football to an engineering school is his ticket out of his drab Pennsylvania coal mining town. VanDerBeek plays football because it's expected of him. He's a second string quarterback but is in the running for a scholarship on academics.
Then first string quarterback Paul Walker is injured and it falls on VanDerBeek. At that point we see what a lot of VanDerBeek's problem is and it's coach Jon Voight.
Like in every Texas small town the local football coach is the town's biggest celebrity. But VanDerBeek s intelligent enough to see him for what he is a ruthless user of his players who doesn't care one wit about the young people in his charge as long as they win for him and win his way.
Gradually however some others start to see Voight for what he is. Te climax is quite a revelation to Voight.
Varsity Blues stands good comparison to the other high school football films I mentioned and to others also. VanDerBeek and Voight lead a well cast film that's quite a bit more than your usual teen flick.
The second is another high school football classic All The Right Moves with Tom Cruise. Cruise and star James VanDerBeek are both 18 and about to graduate frm high school.
The scholarship that Cruise gets from football to an engineering school is his ticket out of his drab Pennsylvania coal mining town. VanDerBeek plays football because it's expected of him. He's a second string quarterback but is in the running for a scholarship on academics.
Then first string quarterback Paul Walker is injured and it falls on VanDerBeek. At that point we see what a lot of VanDerBeek's problem is and it's coach Jon Voight.
Like in every Texas small town the local football coach is the town's biggest celebrity. But VanDerBeek s intelligent enough to see him for what he is a ruthless user of his players who doesn't care one wit about the young people in his charge as long as they win for him and win his way.
Gradually however some others start to see Voight for what he is. Te climax is quite a revelation to Voight.
Varsity Blues stands good comparison to the other high school football films I mentioned and to others also. VanDerBeek and Voight lead a well cast film that's quite a bit more than your usual teen flick.