Now Playing
Critics & Publications
Archives: A-Z Index
Advanced Search

Upcoming Release Calendar
Weekend Box Office
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
How Metascores Are Calculated
Discuss Film In Our Forums

sort by name

sort by score

38 12 Rounds
48 17 Again
76 Adventureland
48 Angels & Demons
54 Battle for Terra
xx Bruno
80 Coraline
40 Dance Flick
83 Drag Me to Hell
72 Earth
45 Fast & Furious
61 Fighting
34 Ghosts of Girlfriends Past
72 Gran Torino
73 Hangover, The
47 Hannah Montana: The Movie
51 Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
54 Imagine That
41 Knowing
32 Land of the Lost
56 Monsters vs. Aliens
34 My Life in Ruins
51 My Sister's Keeper
46 Next Day Air
42 Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian
54 Observe and Report
25 Obsessed
48 Proposal, The
70 Public Enemies
61 Soloist, The
83 Star Trek
64 State of Play
55 Taking of Pelham 1 2 3, The
52 Terminator Salvation
35 Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
77 Under the Sea 3D
88 Up
43 X-Men Origins: Wolverine
34 Year One

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

sort by name

sort by score

67 $9.99
75 24 City
66 Adoration
74 Afghan Star
48 Alien Trespass
56 American Violet
82 Anvil! The Story of Anvil
57 Away We Go
81 Beaches of Agnes, The
62 Big Man Japan
28 Big Shot-Caller, The
78 Boys: The Sherman Brothers' Story, The
55 Brothers Bloom, The
82 Burma VJ: Reporting from a Closed Country
xx Call of the Wild
63 Cheri
62 Cherry Blossoms
63 Dead Snow
65 Departures
18 Downloading Nancy
58 Easy Virtue
70 End of the Line, The
77 Every Little Step
64 Examined Life
80 Food, Inc.
38 Gigantic
56 Girl from Monaco, The
67 Girlfriend Experience, The
87 Gomorrah
89 Goodbye Solo
63 Great Buck Howard, The
79 Harvard Beats Yale 29-29
xx Home
82 Hunger
91 Hurt Locker, The
16 I Hate Valentine's Day
81 Il Divo
54 Is Anybody There?
71 Jerichow
58 Julia
74 Lemon Tree
36 Life is Hot in Cracktown
40 Limits of Control, The
42 Little Ashes
64 Lymelife
50 Management
57 Merry Gentleman, The
66 Moon
35 New York
62 Not Forgotten
xx Offshore
78 O'Horten
64 Outrage
40 Paris 36
54 Pontypool
71 Pressure Cooker
52 Quiet Chaos
83 Revanche
67 Rudo y Cursi
86 Seraphine
65 Sex Positive
70 Shall We Kiss?
77 Sin Nombre
59 Sleep Dealer
74 Song of Sparrows, The
54 Stoning of Soraya M., The
82 Sugar
84 Summer Hours
61 Sunshine Cleaning
28 Surveillance
42 Tennessee
63 Tetro
64 Throw Down Your Heart
80 Tokyo Sonata
63 Tokyo!
70 Tony Manero
74 Treeless Mountain
88 Tulpan
74 Two Lovers
83 Tyson
83 U2 3D
60 Under Our Skin
69 Unmistaken Child
69 Valentino: The Last Emperor
22 What Goes Up
45 Whatever Works
57 Youssou Ndour: I Bring What I Love

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

Friday Night Lights
Universal Pictures


6.7

based on 35 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 74 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

FILM:

TV:

Friday Night Lights (NBC)

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

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.

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.

Newsweek David Ansen

Few films have shown so powerfully the slashing double edge of sports fever.

USA Today Mike Clark

One of the best football movies ever, Nights in the end celebrates the game.

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.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

A smart, sharp, stirring adaptation of the H.G. Bissinger best-seller.

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.

Dallas Observer Robert Wilonsky

The movie works because Berg never forgets to keep his heart in the game and not just his head.

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.

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.

Chicago Reader Andrea Gronvall

Captures all the action of a tumultuous season while showing the emotional toll on the players.

Village Voice Benjamin Strong

Director Peter Berg, an actor himself, gets quietly excruciated performances from the team members.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

Compelling.

Boston Globe Staff (Not credited)

It also bears something you rarely experience in a football movie. Friday Night Lights has a soul.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Berg's picture is certainly an above average effort that provides a solid emotional punch.

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.

New York Daily News Robert Dominguez

Rousing, action-packed.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

The film goes for a grainy, fast-cut, documentary look that is both a blessing and a curse.

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.

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.

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.

Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan

Honest because it gets a paradoxical truth: There's more to life than football, even when there isn't.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

Real enough around the edges to hold our attention even if it sacrifices accuracy for storytelling ease.

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.

Washington Post Sean Daly

Give credit to Berg for keeping Bissinger's all-too-true ending intact. It's a doozy.

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.

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.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

It's all amiably hackneyed, but it sucks you in anyway.

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.

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.

Film Threat Rick Kisonak

The film also benefits from unusually solid writing and a masterfully understated turn by Billy Bob Thornton.

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

Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach

Too much about the game and not enough about the town, the players and everything else.

Salon.com Charles Taylor

There's some good acting in this mess.

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.

Friday Night Lights Universal Pictures

Friday Night Lights
Universal Pictures