VARSITY BLUES and MAJOR LEAGUE

Major. Blues.  –A Dual Review

Dated Sports Ensemble Flicks Provide Nostalgia, Heart, and Humor (Intentional and, uh, Unintentional)

Varsity Blues (1999)

Starring: James Van Der Beek, Jon Voight, Ron Lester, Paul Walker, Thomas F. Duffy, Scott Caan, Amy Smart and Ali Larter

Rated R for language (including graphic sexual references), strong sexual content including graphic nudity, and depictions of alcohol abuse

Nine days ago, while most people were watching Auburn stun undefeated, number 1 Alabama with the unforgettable finish to the Iron Bowl, a news tidbit hit the web that brought a lot of people pause: Paul Walker had died. Walker, best known for his recurring role in the blockbuster Fast and Furious franchise, was 40 when he was killed, along with his friend Roger Rodas, in a car crash in Santa Clarita, California. Walker wasn’t a particularly decorated actor in the way of awards, but his prominent role in the six-film street-racing franchise—plus his appearances in films as varied as teen romcom She’s All That, melodrama Pleastantville, and real-life war drama Flags of Our Fathers—made him someone almost everyone has seen. His death has cast speculation over the future of the ongoing F&F series (which was halfway through filming its seventh installment), and brought forth an outpouring of love and affection for the actor and his work across three decades.

One film I remembered Walker in was the high school football dramedy Varsity Blues, a film I saw on TV years back. I remembered seeing him play the star quarterback of a high school football team, whose untimely injury opened the door for a perpetual second-stringer (James Van Der Beek, of Dawson’s Creek) to strut his stuff on the gridiron. When I looked up the film, I discovered it featured a whole host of then-unknowns I’d seen in multiple other movies since, so I decided to re-watch it.

Walker didn’t have a very large role in Varsity Blues, which, happily, keeps his memory from being tarnished. Blues, an MTV production, is not a terrible movie but a horribly-misguided one. It has the bare bones and basic ideas of a decent story, but its outlandish portrayal of high school life and its unbelievably-caricatured depictions of supporting characters made it a grating movie to watch.

The main character is Van Der Beek’s Jonathan “Mox” Moxon, a high school senior in West Canaan, Texas, one of those little Midwest towns where, every Friday night, time stops and eyes turn to the bright lights of the high school football gridiron. Though he’s been friends with the team’s best players all his life, Mox is a benchwarmer, receiving none of the accolades showered on star quarterback Lance Harbor (Walker, just fine in a straight role) and legendary coach Bud Kilmer (a scenery-chewing Jon Voight). But when Lance is horribly injured during a big game late in the season, Mox becomes the man, an idol to the townspeople and leader, on and off the field, to his buddies Billy Bob (Ron Lester), Tweeder (Scott Caan), and Wendell (Eliel Swinton). Mox’s newfound fame brings him affection and praise from his no-nonsense father (Thomas F. Duffy), creates separation between him and his down-to-earth girlfriend (Amy Smart), and brings him, for the first time, nose-to-nose to the unpleasant Kilmer, a win-at-all costs fanatic driven by his own growing legend.

See? That doesn’t sound so bad! How could they mess that up? The main way they do it is with cheap characterizations: the rotund Billy Bob is the goony fat kid, stuffing his face, raising a pet pig named Bacon, and prone to crying at the slightest provocation (Lester is nails-on-the-chalkboard annoying in the role); Caan’s star wide receiver Tweeter is an equally-irritating hillbilly redneck who thinks of/talks about nothing but sex and drinking; Swinton’s star running back Wendell is the token black kid, who is a great athlete with a chip on his shoulder because the prejudiced coach doesn’t give him the ball. And that’s not to mention the star quarterback’s cheerleader girlfriend, played by a she-should-be-embarrassed Ali Larter as, essentially, a manipulative whore with supposedly good intentions (her famous whipped-cream bikini is kinda neat-looking, though). And way too much time is given to an insipid subplot in which Mox’s kid brother (Joe Pichler) is obsessed with trying different religions.

The football action is cliché, the emotion is cheap, and there are some laughs to be had, but most of them are at the movie’s expense. Yeah, it’s kinda cool to look back and see all these famous faces so early in their careers, though, to be honest, most of them are less well-known now than they were at the time—which the exception of Oscar-winner Voight, who makes the controlling coach a detestable villain, the late Walker has proven to be by far the most successful. Van Der Beek—who’s decent as Mox—hasn’t done anything of note besides this and Dawson's Creek; Caan, Lester and Larter are all stuck on TV, and Amy Smart is trying hard to build off her appearances in moderately-successful films like The Butterfly Effect and Crank.

Ultimately, this for-high-schoolers movie has largely been done—better—other times, so you should save your time. Walker’s only in a handful of scenes, with about a dozen lines. If you want to reminisce about his work and honor his memory, I could recommend several other movies instead.

Grade: C-

Major League (1989)

Starring: Tom Berenger, Charlie Sheen, Corbin Bensen, Bob Uecker, Margaret Whitton, James Gannon, Rene Russo, Wesley Snipes and Dennis Haysbert

Rated R for language and some sexual content

Oh, the irony. I went out looking for Varsity Blues, which turned out to be a pretty crappy movie, and the movie I got in tandem in the twofer combo pack, Major League, turned out to be pretty great. Also ironic: this smart-aleck comedy also features a bunch of famous faces, who, while no longer at their peaks, have all accomplished a good deal more than the glowing-with-youth cast of Varsity Blues.

Baseball movies have been in vogue lately, with Oscar-nominee Moneyball and box-office hit 42 making headlines in the last few years, but Major League is better than both those films in several key ways: it’s fictional, so they can do whatever they want without just following the boring script of history, this movie actually cares about the sport of baseball, not the just the business/politics surrounding it, and it actually cares about the players on the field. Also, the humor is wry rather than splattered all over the screen (as in Blues), and the characters and emotion are better-written and more subtle. It is a barrel of laughs, though.

In Major League, the owner of the long-suffering Cleveland Indians franchise has just died, leaving ownership of the team to his rich, selfish widow (Margaret Whitton). The new owner doesn’t care at all for Cleveland, and merely wants the team to stink, to be so bad and uninspiring that revenue drops enough to allow a move to Miami and its tropical climate. She’s so committed to sinking the ship that she wants nothing but rejects as the major players—a hangdog minor league coach (James Gannon) as the manager, a creaky, over-the-hill veteran (Tom Berenger) as the catcher, an ex-con (Charlie Sheen) as the hot younger pitcher, a preening self-promoter (Corbin Bensen) as the third baseman, and other misfits. Sure enough, the early weeks of the season are a comedy of errors, but, despite the owner’s attempts to make them so miserable they don’t even try (they get a creaky old buss, a taped-up, propeller-driven plane, and no hot-water showers), they start coming together. After all, the catcher’s getting a second wind after being reunited with the love of his life (Rene Russo), the pitcher wants to make something of his life, two lame duck outfielders (Wesley Snipes and Dennis Haysbert) are finding themselves, and the manager sees the city rallying. Suddenly, they’re neck and neck with the New York Yankees for first place in the league, and, despite the owner’s hopes for a losing season, they all want the big prize.

Major League was funny, but it wasn’t dumb, and it had heart. You really feel for Berenger as he tries to patch things up with his old flame, Russo, and boy, is it a treat to see guys like Snipes and Haysbert so young (in particular, seeing Haysbert as a voodoo-worshipping nut when he’s now best-known as the dignified Allstate Insurance pitchman is a real treat). There’s enough baseball action to keep fans interested, the announcer (Bob Uecker) is a degrading hoot, and the end is riotously uplifting. As opposed to Blues, League’s closing shot of the cast together, celebrating, makes you smile because you know big things are in store for all of the actors:

-Berenger: already an Oscar nominee after his classic villainous turn in Platoon, won an Emmy last year for his role in the Hatfields & McCoys miniseries and has appeared in dozens of films, including the groundbreaking blockbuster Inception

-Sheen: had already appeared in two of the ‘80s most important movies (Platoon and Wall Street), went on to star in TV’s #1 comedy, Two and A Half Men, for several years. Yeah, he made headlines for getting kicked off the show by acting an a**, he parlayed that publicity into a new hilarious show, Anger Management.

-Russo: played Mel Gibson’s love interest in the 3^rd and 4^th Lethal Weapon movies, Clint Eastwood’s love interest in the well-reviewed thriller In the Line of Fire, Pierce Brosnan’s romantic foil in The Thomas Crown Affair, and recently enjoyed an expanded role as the God of Thunder’s mother in Thor: The Dark World

-Snipes: starred in the decent Fugitive sequel, U.S. Marshalls, and made tons of movies even before his popular Blade vampire trilogy

-Well, you already know what Haysbert is best known for. "So, get Allstate..." ;)

Grade: B+

Varsity Blues (1999)

Directed by Brian Robbins

Screenplay by W. Peter Iliff

Rated R

Length: 104 minutes

Major League (1989)

Written and Directed by David S. Ward

Rated R

Length: 106 minutes