It’s Teensploitation!"
declared the cover ofEntertainment Weekly.
Varsity Blueshit first, though, 20 years ago today.
Credit: Moviestore/REX/Shutterstock
And it sits weird in that pantheon.
The era’s other teen movies circle through vanilla-fab high schools, Los Angeles campuses full of midwinter suntans.
(Or the East Coast equivalent, some chicCruel IntentionsNew York neighborhood.)
(All together now: “Ah don’t wuhnt, YORE LIE-UF.")
Van Der Beek was already famous, the proverbial Dawson inDawson’s Creek.
Van Der Beek’s playing the nice guy diamond in the dudebro rough, though.
Jonathan “Mox” Moxon is a nerd’s dream of an athlete.
He keeps classic Vonnegut cradled in his playbook.
He wants to go to Brown University.
How chill a jock is he?
You get the vibe that they’rebothover it: The game, this town, their parents, their friends.
Kilmer runs his team the way Immortan Joe runs his War Boys, pumping followers full of syringe juice.
He calls his players “soldiers.”
We’re near the end of football season.
Until the plot kicks in,Varsity Blueshas fun looking patiently at that society.
The guys play, they party, they sit looking uneasy while dads recall lost glory days.
Then Lance gets a bad bone-breaking tackle, and Mox takes the field.
All that Vonnegut went to his throwing arm, I guess.
In his first play, he makes a 40-yard pass.
All this is what you could call the essence of punk-pop, screw-you brashness concurrent with highly-effective-person overachievement.
The ’90s demographic dream: the popular misfit!
The movie’s a little too nice for that.
Moxlovesfootball, just notbadfootball.
SoVarsity Bluesis an odd viewing experience now, 20 years later, mid Concussion Era.
A couple of lines have aged very badly.
declares Tweeder, all fratboy smiles.
Your mileage may vary.
Retroactively, one legacy ofVarsity Bluesis its status as a prototype forFriday Night Lights.
The movie came out after H. G. “Buzz” Bissinger’s book but before the ensuing film/TV adaptations.
There’s a new emotional kick to the movie, too.
Ron Lester runs away with the movie.
(Though: Credit to Larter for convincingly radiating smalltown-desperation pathos wearing just Reddi-Wip.)
Lester played a similar character in the great TV seriesPopular, then parodied himself inNot Another Teen Movie.
He died way too young in 2016, a few years after Walker.
But when Billy Bob runs in the game-winning touchdown, it’s a hall-of-fame sports-movie catharsis.
And something in the Van Der Beek/Voight antagonism still plays today.
You have to remember this was a time when nobody knew what millennials were.
(In that great EW cover story, writer Josh Young calls us “Echo Boomers.")
That meant anything was possible, still.
The whole team follows him: They’re unionizing, going on strike!
The film can’t fully own that idea.
Kilmer leaves, and the team just wins the district championshiptheirway.
But there’s a rebel spirit toVarsity Blues, too.
Meet a new generation of kids raised under the thumb of a mean old dictator.
They are fing up his universe.
