"Friday Night Lights"

And what is it that gives them the strength to meet those challenges? Why, football, of course, and its life lessons of dedication, hard work, blah, blah, blah. It doesn't matter, finally, whether most of these kids are going to be able to put those lessons to work at anything other than menial, low-paying jobs, whether they are going to have to spend the rest of their lives in a small town where they're washed up as soon as they leave high school. It doesn't matter that there's no one to say to them, look, teamwork and persistence are great things to learn at a young age, but there are more important uses for them than a frickin' football game.

Berg tries to peddle an "it's not whether you win or lose" finale, but he can't disguise the fact that "Friday Night Lights" wallows in every piece of inspirational horseshit from every hoary sports movie you've ever seen. Thornton even has a let's-win-this-one-for-Boobie speech. ("Friday Night Lights" looks especially egregious next to the wonderful "Mr. 3000," which really does understand that sporting glory is a paltry thing next to building a decent and satisfying life you can take pride in.)

It's hypocritical, but it's not that big a loss. The movie that "Friday Night Lights" starts out being substitutes slick, cynical point-scoring for insight. "Friday Night Lights" isn't repugnant like "Very Bad Things," the first movie Berg directed, but it shares some of that movie's superior everything-is-crap smugness. It's bad enough watching Boobie get injured -- Berg has to include a shot of the opposing player who did it getting congratulated by a teammate. It's sour little details like that that leave a bad taste.

Berg doesn't show much empathy for the former high school athletes trying to live vicariously through the new crop -- he seems to think that a pop psychological explanation of their envy will suffice. Most of the team's boosters don't even get that puny consideration. The Odessa businessmen (and their wives, one of whom tells the coach not to spare a black player because "that big nigger can't be broke") are the movie's examples of boobus americanus, vulgarians in garish sports clothes who exercise the threat of their puny power to keep underlings in line. If he could, Berg would probably give them Bush buttons to wear (and seeing as the movie takes place in the fall of 1988, there's no reason he couldn't).

There's some good acting in this mess. Lucas Black manages to suggest what's roiling around inside his nearly silent character without violating the placid surface. As Boobie, Derek Luke understands that playing his character's grandstanding doesn't mean he has to grandstand as an actor. And Grover Coulson, as the uncle who raises Boobie, has some good moments: When Boobie is injured, Coulson looks helplessly back in the stands to see if the college scouts are watching, as if they could somehow have missed the moment.

Thornton gives a very fine performance here; he's one of those rare actors who is able to convincingly play decency without making it seem boring. He stays quietly in character and even manages to dry out the most potentially mawkish scenes. But the movie's determination to shy away from complexity lets him down.

The coach is well aware of the pressures on his players -- the same pressure is on him. But the movie never examines what if any complicity he feels in driving his players toward victory. It's his job, but we never know if he's tempted to tell them that there's more to life than football, or if he ever tries to make sure they don't neglect their schoolwork. When, with the best intentions, Boobie and his uncle lie to him about what the doctors have said about Boobie returning to play, you wonder why as basically decent a man as this doesn't simply pick up the phone and ask the doctors themselves.

But these are questions the movie doesn't want us to ponder too closely. The end titles tell us where the various players are now and what they are doing. There are, however, some salient facts missing. We find out that Boobie played football in junior college and now lives in Texas with his twin girls. We aren't told what he does for a living -- or if he feels confident enough to read his little girls a bedtime story.

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