Varsity Blues

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

The movie is also brisk and wholehearted and smarter than you expect.

Washington Post Mike Musgrove

This flick has modest ambitions, but it delivers the goods in a fresh manner.

The New York Times Stephen Holden

A paint-by-numbers story that offers no surprises and a hero and villain etched in white and black with few shades of gray.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

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.

Chicago Tribune John Petrakis

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.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

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.

Chicago Reader Lisa Alspector

Its depiction of teenage behavior appears calculated to seem irreverent while satisfying expectations.

New Times (L.A.) M.V. Moorhead

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.

Film.com Tom Keogh

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.

Los Angeles Times John Anderson

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.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

A movie that doesn't buy into all the tenets of our national sports religion; the subtext is that winning isn't everything.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

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.

Film.com Robert Horton

Eventually fizzles out badly.

Film Threat Ron Wells

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.

Newsweek Ted Gideonse

A flat, cliched film in a flat, cliched genre.

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.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

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.

Variety Joe Leydon

An unappetizing mix of raucously vulgar comedy and teen-angst melodrama.

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.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

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.