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45
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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
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43
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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
Friday Night Lights

Generally favorable reviews
Based on 35 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 74 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >
Movie Info
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:
Theatrical: October 8, 2004
DVD: January 18, 2005
Running Time: 117 minutes, Color
Origin: USA
Summary
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)
Also On Metacritic
FILM: Hancock The Kingdom The Rundown Very Bad Things
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
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...
Chicago Tribune Allison Benedikt
There isn't a bad performance here, but besides Thornton, Luke stands out.
Read Full Review >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 >Newsweek David Ansen
Few films have shown so powerfully the slashing double edge of sports fever.
Read Full Review >USA Today Mike Clark
One of the best football movies ever, Nights in the end celebrates the game.
Read Full Review >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 >Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea
A smart, sharp, stirring adaptation of the H.G. Bissinger best-seller.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Dallas Observer Robert Wilonsky
The movie works because Berg never forgets to keep his heart in the game and not just his head.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader Andrea Gronvall
Captures all the action of a tumultuous season while showing the emotional toll on the players.
Read Full Review >Village Voice Benjamin Strong
Director Peter Berg, an actor himself, gets quietly excruciated performances from the team members.
Read Full Review >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 >ReelViews James Berardinelli
Berg's picture is certainly an above average effort that provides a solid emotional punch.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold
The film goes for a grainy, fast-cut, documentary look that is both a blessing and a curse.
Read Full Review >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.
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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan
Honest because it gets a paradoxical truth: There's more to life than football, even when there isn't.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan
Real enough around the edges to hold our attention even if it sacrifices accuracy for storytelling ease.
Read Full Review >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 >Washington Post Sean Daly
Give credit to Berg for keeping Bissinger's all-too-true ending intact. It's a doozy.
Read Full Review >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 >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 >Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez
It's all amiably hackneyed, but it sucks you in anyway.
Read Full Review >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 >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 >Film Threat Rick Kisonak
The film also benefits from unusually solid writing and a masterfully understated turn by Billy Bob Thornton.
Read Full Review >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 >Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach
Too much about the game and not enough about the town, the players and everything else.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 6.7 (out of 10) based on 74 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Daniel V gave it a10:
You have to be into sports especially football to really appreciate this work.
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.
