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Friday Night Lights
Universal Pictures

Friday Night Lights reviews
Critic Score
Metascore: 70 Metascore out of 100
User Score  
6.7 out of 10
based on 35 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
based on 73 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

MPAA RATING: PG-13 for thematic issues, sexual content, language, some teen drinking and rough sports action

Starring Billy Bob Thornton, Lucas Black, Garrett Hedlund, Derek Luke, Jay Hernandez, Lee Jackson, Lee Thompson Young, Tim McGraw, and Connie Britton

A true American story of a group of young athletes, their town and their dreams. (Universal)


GENRE(S): Action  |  Drama  
WRITTEN BY: David Aaron Cohen
Peter Berg
Buzz Bissinger (book Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream)
 
DIRECTED BY: Peter Berg  
RELEASE DATE: DVD: January 18, 2005 
Video: January 18, 2005 
Theatrical: October 8, 2004 
RUNNING TIME: 117 minutes, Color 
ORIGIN: USA 

What The Critics Said

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100
Chicago Tribune Allison Benedikt
There isn't a bad performance here, but besides Thornton, Luke stands out.
Read Full Review
100
Empire Ian Nathan
The best sports movie for years, as it's not about sport at all. Forget fears of jingoistic grandstanding, this is an un-American all-American tale that deserves attention.
Read Full Review
90
Newsweek David Ansen
Few films have shown so powerfully the slashing double edge of sports fever.
Read Full Review
88
USA Today Mike Clark
One of the best football movies ever, Nights in the end celebrates the game.
Read Full Review
88
Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
The movie demonstrates the power of sports to involve us; we don't live in Odessa and are watching a game played 16 years ago, and we get all wound up.
Read Full Review
88
Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea
A smart, sharp, stirring adaptation of the H.G. Bissinger best-seller.
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83
Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
Thornton, giving a splendid, disciplined performance, seamlessly shapes his coach into a believable man of quality rather than star-size charisma.
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80
Dallas Observer Robert Wilonsky
The movie works because Berg never forgets to keep his heart in the game and not just his head.
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80
LA Weekly Ron Stringer
Country singer and sometime actor Tim McGraw excels as the bitter, besotted ex-Panther who can't cut his kid enough slack to follow his own game plan.
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80
The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt
The film lets you get caught up in the excitement of this religion and the addictive nature of those stadium lights. Berg and cinematographer Tobias Schliessler get up close to the action, catching the hits and miscues in all their violent urgency.
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80
Chicago Reader Andrea Gronvall
Captures all the action of a tumultuous season while showing the emotional toll on the players.
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80
Village Voice Benjamin Strong
Director Peter Berg, an actor himself, gets quietly excruciated performances from the team members.
Read Full Review
75
San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
Compelling.
Read Full Review
75
Boston Globe Staff (Not credited)
It also bears something you rarely experience in a football movie. Friday Night Lights has a soul.
Read Full Review
75
ReelViews James Berardinelli
Berg's picture is certainly an above average effort that provides a solid emotional punch.
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75
Rolling Stone Peter Travers
Thornton gets inside the coach's skin. It's a subtle, soulful performance in a movie that otherwise goes for the jugular.
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75
New York Daily News Robert Dominguez
Rousing, action-packed.
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75
Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold
The film goes for a grainy, fast-cut, documentary look that is both a blessing and a curse.
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70
Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
For all its energy, fine performances and dramatic confrontations, Friday Night Lights substitutes intensity for insight, dodging the book's harsher findings like a dazzling broken-field runner.
70
Variety Todd McCarthy
Friday Night Lights is the "Black Hawk Down" of high school football movies. As exclusively as Ridley Scott's picture was about combat, this film concerns football and nothing but.
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70
The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps
When Friday Night Lights gets to the big games, the time it's spent creates an atmosphere thick with tension, one akin to the real-world experience of watching a favorite team play for its life.
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70
The New York Times Dana Stevens
Uplifting and troubling, partly because it is more honest than most sports movies about the high cost and short life span of high school football glory.
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70
Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan
Honest because it gets a paradoxical truth: There's more to life than football, even when there isn't.
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70
Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan
Real enough around the edges to hold our attention even if it sacrifices accuracy for storytelling ease.
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70
TV Guide Angel Cohn
Stands out by virtue of its impressive visual style and the filmmakers' decision not to massage the facts into cliched conflicts with neat, feel-good resolutions that produce the proper sense of uplift.
Read Full Review
70
Washington Post Sean Daly
Give credit to Berg for keeping Bissinger's all-too-true ending intact. It's a doozy.
Read Full Review
67
Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten
The game footage is as engrossing as the real thing, although it comes at the expense of diminished attention to the teen players and their emotional problems.
Read Full Review
63
New York Post Lou Lumenick
The last half hour devoted to the Big Game, staged by a crew from NFL films, is genuinely rousing and inspiring. That's where Friday Night Lights finally shines.
Read Full Review
63
Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez
It's all amiably hackneyed, but it sucks you in anyway.
Read Full Review
63
Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman
It's a passably made, grittily acted slice of life in Texas that veers not an inch from the norm for this sort of picture.
Read Full Review
63
The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen
In the deck of clichés that is the typical sports movie, it at least does us the courtesy of shuffling the cards a little.
Read Full Review
60
Film Threat Rick Kisonak
The film also benefits from unusually solid writing and a masterfully understated turn by Billy Bob Thornton.
Read Full Review
58
Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy
Acted with earnest commitment and scored and edited with jazzy, laconic grace, "Lights" tells us absolutely nothing we haven't heard before -- and often -- in sports films
Read Full Review
50
Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach
Too much about the game and not enough about the town, the players and everything else.
Read Full Review
40
Salon.com Charles Taylor
There's some good acting in this mess.
Read Full Review

What Our Users Said

Vote Now!The average user rating for this movie is 6.7 (out of 10) based on 73 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Brandon L. gave it a1:
The script was complete crap so how could the movie be good. The book was amazing and helped keep up the energy of the game and the social aspect of the town, but the movie changed facts and made some moments "feel good" moments when in actuality they were horrible times.

Tyler D gave it a10:
One of the best, if not THE best sports film of all time. Myself being a fan of Explosions in the Sky only improves how much I enjoyed the movie, as well. Billy Bob Thorton at his best.

Joey G. gave it a10:
If i could give this a 11 i would give it a 15 this is the best sports movie ive seen and one of the best movies overall ive seen........i was blown away by the amazing passion and hear the actors were able to put in this amazing sports story.

Jacob C. gave it a10:
Greatest Football Movie since the Progam this movie was awesome.

Fraser W. gave it an8:
In my opinion i look at Remember the Titans and The Longest Yard but none of them can even compare with Friday Night Lights.

Rita P. gave it a9:
Great moving film, you don't need to love gridiron to throroughly enjoy it. If you rent the DVD, the special features especially the doco on the 88 Permian Panthers is well worth watching too.

Joe C. gave it a9:
Very well acted. Expertly directed. Honest story told without being heavy handed. If you like Remember the Titans, Hoosiers, or Breaking Away, you'll like this film. It's a team effort -- the whole cast is memorable and there are both touching scenes and great gridiron action. Perhaps too much gridiron action at the expense of the story, but you definitely feel the pressure of living a high school football life in a small Texas town -- for all it's glory and narrow-minded anguish.

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