On the surface, Friday Night Lights is an excellent movie. Billy Bob Thornton, an actor who is highly overrated in my opinion, is perfectly cast as Coach Gary Gaines. Derek Luke, who is one of the best young actors working today, has a wonderful breakout performance as star running back Boobie Miles. Even country star Tim McGraw is surprisingly good as an alcoholic father and ex-football star who tries to live his life through his son.

The film is actually based on a book of the same name by H. G. Bissinger. In 1988, Bissinger, a Philadelphia writer, moved to Odessa, Texas to chronicle the Periman Panther's run to the state championships. For the most part, the character descriptions in the movie reflect those in the book, and there are even some cameos in the film from real life Periman players.

Although football is probably the only sport that translates well on film, there seemed to be an effort to give this film a colossal, epic, quality, and many of these efforts fell flat. A lot of the slow motion shots were completely unnecessary and got old as the film moved on. Many scenes were shot using a handheld camera, and the documentary style worked well with the story. But again, what makes this movie is the acting, and the realism that many of the actors bring to the screen.

Let's drill down to the reasons why this film doesn't make the cut. This film is supposed to be "based on a true story," but in the end, Hollywood took too many liberties with the actual events, changing whole games, scores, and scenarios. I don't want to divulge too much of the storyline in this review, but I do want to say that a good 50% - 60% of this movie differs from the real life story. The larger issues of race, class, and education, which were essential parts of the book, were largely ignored. The game that took place at the end of this movie didn't even exist. Rumor has it that some of the Dallas Carter High School players and coaches did not like the way that they were depicted in this film.

I find it very disappointing that they had to invent many parts of the film, especially because the real life drama is worthy of documentation. If Hollywood made a movie with a fictional high school football team set in a fictional town, I would have liked this movie a lot more. Unfortunately, this is another example of sacrificing a good book for the sake of film.

Stone writes for Article Online and the car site Autovida.