4K Ultra HD Review: Varsity Blues

By John Corrado

The 1999 coming-of-age sports movie Varsity Blues is now available for the first time on 4K Ultra HD, in honour of the film’s 25th anniversary this month.

The film is set in West Canaan, Texas, a fictional all-American small town that revolves around their high school football team, the Coyotes. James Van Der Beek stars as Jonathan “Mox” Moxon, who gets promoted to quarterback when football star Lance Harbor (Paul Walker) is injured and can no longer play.

The team includes the impulsive, hard-partying Charlie Tweeder (Scott Caan), and the overweight Billy Bob (Ron Lester), whose health concerns are ignored due to his brute force on the field.

The boys are all dealing in their own ways with the pressure put upon them by both the team and their community. They are going up against the expectations of their fathers, as well as the athletic demands of their coach Bud Kilmer (Jon Voight), a powerful figurehead at the school who runs the team with a militaristic touch.

Directed by Brian Robbins, who would go on to make the feel-good baseball movie Hardball starring Keanu Reeves two years later, Varsity Blues walks a thoroughly predictable path that resembles other films both before and after (it was even parodied in Not Another Teen Movie, with Lester reprising a comedic version of his role). But, as a teen sports movie, it still offers a mostly appealing mix of some comedy and more dramatic bits, with a little romance and relationship troubles thrown in.

Everything about it, from the humour to the pop-punk soundtrack, feels very late-nineties. But this “product of its time” feel also gives the film a nostalgic, time capsule quality that wouldn’t have been apparent upon its release (it also takes on a bittersweet quality now with two of its young stars, Walker and Lester, having passed away in middle age in the decade-and-a-half following the film’s release).

It’s a fairly entertaining if conventional coming-of-age movie, highlighted by its sense of time and place and performed by a mostly likeable cast, and fans should be satisfied by the 4K presentation. According to the press release, the film has been “newly remastered from the original camera negative,” and the 4K disc offers a nicely refined image that highlights details such as the team’s blue jerseys and helmets, and sweat on the players.