| 75 |
Entertainment Weekly
The movie is also brisk and wholehearted and smarter than you expect.
|
| 70 |
Washington Post
Mike Musgrove
This flick has modest ambitions, but it delivers the goods in a fresh manner.
|
| 70 |
The New York Times
A paint-by-numbers story that offers no surprises and a hero and villain etched in white and black with few shades of gray.
|
| 63 |
ReelViews
Unfortunately, Voight is not in every scene, and, when he's absent, Varsity Blues has a tendency to flounder, descending into the realm of formulaic sports movie melodrama.
|
| 63 |
Chicago Tribune
If you are willing to overlook the occasional missed block, clumsy tackle or dropped pass, there is more than enough in Varsity Blues to keep you engrossed.
|
| 60 |
Rolling Stone
Director Brian Robbins ("Good Burger") and screenwriter W. Peter Iliff ("Prayer of the Rollerboys") have wrapped their moral fable in a glossy package of hard football action and towel-slapping, hard-body fun that might seem exciting if you've never seen a movie before.
|
| 60 |
Chicago Reader
Its depiction of teenage behavior appears calculated to seem irreverent while satisfying expectations.
|
| 60 |
New Times (L.A.)
Originally, somebody may have wanted the film to be a serious exploration of the dark side of high school sports, but it ended up as just one more sports picture.
|
| 60 |
Film.com
It is an ostensibly serious story about being young and struggling to wrest control over one's life from the hands of fools, yet it doesn't behave like a serious drama that wants to lead us anywhere.
|
| 60 |
Los Angeles Times
A trashy little movie about drinking, football and drinking, is also one of those films that pretends to moralize about the very behavior it milks for every giggle it can get.
|
| 50 |
Chicago Sun-Times
A movie that doesn't buy into all the tenets of our national sports religion; the subtext is that winning isn't everything.
|
| 50 |
San Francisco Chronicle
We are aware going in that Varsity Blues' cannot be a landmark of world cinema. Yet working within the tired formula, the picture turns out to be not so bad.
|
| 50 |
Film.com
Eventually fizzles out badly.
|
| 50 |
Film Threat
It is not quite as stupid as it looks. I'm not saying it ISN'T dumb, though, just not as bad as I think even the studio thought.
|
| 50 |
Newsweek
A flat, cliched film in a flat, cliched genre.
|
| 50 |
TV Guide
Sandra Contreras
This coming-of-age drama scores big points for trying to honestly tell a story rather than just pass the time.
|
| 40 |
Austin Chronicle
Its vague stabs at moralizing and goofball shenanigans are an odd mix. It's not the high school experience I had, nor is it probably like yours.
|
| 40 |
Variety
An unappetizing mix of raucously vulgar comedy and teen-angst melodrama.
|
| 25 |
San Francisco Examiner
Craig Marine
Half-comedy, half-coming-of-age movie with another half or so of sports film and maybe another quarter of soundtrack that adds up to 175 percent of a bad movie.
|
| 25 |
Christian Science Monitor
The story is mildly entertaining in its hackneyed way, but there's no excusing the picture's exploitative treatment of almost all the female characters.
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