Friday Night Lights – Season One (DVD-Video) + We Are Marshall (HD-DVD/DVD Combo Format)

 

Picture: B-/B/C+     Sound: B-/B+/B-     Extras: C     Episodes/Film: C

 

 

Is the sports film such a formula that it can sabotage any serious attempt to tell a story, even when it is from a terrible real-life incident?  It does not help that the way to tell the story has become too self-impressed with itself, leading to product that feels like nothing more than product.  After suffering through the feature film version of Friday Night Lights (see my HD-DVD review elsewhere on this site) and the especially inane Gridiron Gang (see my Blu-ray/DVD review elsewhere on this site), you realize Hollywood is so out of touch with football and this can be summed up in one word: energy.

 

You can shake the camera, do would-be slick edits and dirty-up the image until the cows come home, but if you cannot tell a story well, even if you have a good one to tell, you are sunk.  The idea of making Friday Night Lights into a TV series seemed like a total mistake and it has not done well, but NBC and Universal are sticking by Peter Berg and Brian Grazer to see if their show can find a new audience in its second season.  If anything, it reminds me of then MGM made Shaft into a TV series after three feature films.  After Shaft In Africa imploded a potential franchise, there was so much they could not do on TV and with Richard Roundtree, created a decent weekly detective show.  Unfortunately, it was too black for detective fans and too subtle for the Blaxploitation crowd.

 

Lights cast is not built on one star, but an ensemble and in place of the endless edits of the somehow hit film, more story is being presented with the time a weekly TV series allows.  It is an improvement by default, but Berg is competent at best and not even the best efforts of the cast can save the series from its soap opera roots and its attempt not to be so.  Critics are impressed, yet no one is watching.  There is even a money back guarantee on this DVD set, so why no takers?

 

Because when you watch it, it is just not that involving, Berg is just putzing around with the same old same old and this is never truly believable as at some point in any episode on the disc trips up badly at some point and embarrassingly so.  This shows the low standards of most TV critics today.  Maybe the second season will fix this if they looked at “replay” footage, but knowing Berg’s mentality and self will, I don’t expect the show to get any better, but am curious enough to look into it after sitting through these.  Please note that is with very low expectations.

 

We get the stereotypical slacker with a future if he was only motivated, the gals with their life choices, the determined coach, the small town and the tragic event that is supposed to make us take this more seriously when it only seems like a desperate plot device to make people watch.  Casting is the only real reason this got renewed.  Otherwise, it makes Room 222 seem more exciting and Welcome Back, Kotter seem edgy.

 

Like Berg, McG is another director who cannot keep the camera still or resist going bonkers on an editing machine.  The Music Video director has gone on to producing film and TV projects, as well as helm several features.  The fun Charlie’s Angels was followed-up by the heartless, soulless, tired, sickening, deranged, pathetic sequel Charlie’s Angels – Full Throttle and McG did not direct again until We Are Marshall.  When I heard he would take on the real life story about a town mortified by the loss of nearly an entire football team, I honestly cringed.

 

The final film was actually better than expected, but McG just has no idea of how to handle a narrative, even and especially one based on real life and set in reality.  What saves the film is McG is forced to hold back simply by the nature of the material as to show some form of respect to those lost.

 

When the town of Huntington, West Virginia hears the news, the mourning and effect is deep and instantaneous.  The Jamie Linden screenplay takes the time to show us the town, the people, the relationships, the tight-knit circumstances and then the sudden impact of the tragedy.  Slowly, the pain is dealt with, but the film is honest enough to know that it will never go away.  To this, Matthew Fox, David Strathairn, Ian McShane, January Jones, Kate Mara and Anthony Mackie are impressive.  Then Mathew McConaughey comes in as the new coach top try and put a new team together and gives one of his best performances in years.  It is amazing to see what he can do when he tries and feels like acting.

 

Needless to say there is more to this than either version of Friday Night Lights, yet McG’s many bad value judgments from editing to pacing to how the film is processed to his inability to handle such weighty material ultimately undermines the film overall and throughout.  If he and it had more of the heart and soul of the peak in the conclusion, it could have been a breakthrough for him as a filmmaker, but that would have been hoping for too much.  Especially after Charlie’s Angels – Full Throttle, it just proves that when you do not or cannot find a way to care and put that on the screen, boy, does it show!

 

The result are two football projects that almost have the same tired flat feel, despite the ambitions of the cast in different ways.  After so many good sports films of late (Glory Road, Pride, The Greatest Game Ever Played, Miracle) about other sports, there is no excuse for the limits, unless there is something dark about football not being addressed by current films (like Oliver Stone’s Any Given Sunday, which is a big step backwards after North Dallas Forty, as well as for Stone as filmmaker with something to say) now or for a very long time.  Either of these projects had the chance to address the gamer deeply and both were too distracted.  For fans only, save Marshall, which is a mixed bag worth a look for non-football reasons at best.

 

 

The anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image on the episodes of Lights have surprisingly good picture fidelity, showing in part that Universal wanted to make sure these looked good to build the potential audience and the result is (despite some image degrading and annoying shaky camerawork) one of the best-looking HD productions form TV to hit DVD since Smallville.  Ironically, the anamorphically enhanced 2.35 X 1 image on Marshall is sadly too degraded on the DVD side of the HD-DVD/DVD Combo disc we received and looked much better in 35mm presentations in theaters.

 

The 1080p 2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image on the HD side is much better, but a certain stylizing holds it back from being even better, cutting into some good camerawork by Director of Photography Shane Hurlbut, A.S.C., that I had a feeling would mistranslate into these results in these formats.  I expect the Blu-ray to be no different.  Perhaps he was trying to differentiate his work here from his amazing work on The Greatest Game Ever Played (reviewed elsewhere on this site), but some of this backfires and the results are mixed, though I do like many of his composition choices.

 

Extras on Lights include deleted scenes and a behind the scenes featurette, while Marshall offers the original theatrical trailer and featurette Legendary Coaches: How Coaches Overcome Adversity.  In both cases, that is adequate.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo