Friday Night Lights (2004/Blu-Ray)

 

Picture: B     Sound: B-     Extras: C     Film: C-

 

 

Since we covered the now defunct HD-DVD version of Friday Night Lights the 2004 film, Peter Berg gave us the awful Kingdom and the huge-but-underwhelming hit Hancock.  First, you can read about Friday Night Lights at this link:

 

http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/4041/Friday+Night+Lights+(2004/HD-DVD)

 

 

Well, it took Will Smith’s star power to restrain him enough to have a big hit and not make a film a total mess and the TV version of Friday Night Lights is two seasons and counting, but no one is watching.  Better than this feature by default, guess Universal is hoping for a cult classic or belated hit, but star Taylor Kitsch is already poised for a bigger hit and greater success as Gambit in the Wolverine film for Marvel Comics.  This Blu-ray is a catch up release to that out of print HD-DVD, so is it any better?

 

The 1080p 2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image never has a shot that lasts for more than a few seconds and is extremely unexciting, looking bad once again in the same transfer from the HD-DVD.  I can never bash the editing of this film enough, but it is the reason Hollywood is losing money and is hopefully going to be a look that goes by the wayside soon.  As for the sound, the HD-DVD only came with Dolby Digital Plus 5.1, but this Blu-ray bumps the sound codec up to DTS HD Master Audio (MA) lossless 5.1 and all it does is make the bad audio sound more obviously worse and choppy.  Think Platoon for morons.  The extras are all the same from the HD-DVD, so there is nothing new here, but then you can say that about everything on the disc.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo