Varsity Blues (1999) / Fordson: Faith, Fasting, Football (2011)

I've never been much of a football fan. In high school I went to one game, I think, and I have no memory of who we were playing or who won. I think I was at the school for something else and my friends and I were all "I guess we should go? We're already here?" Keep in mind, everything we said at that time ended with a question mark.

The movie Varsity Blues came out when I was a sophomore. It was a big deal in a pop culture sense because it was James Van Der Beek's first feature role since the debut of Dawson's Creek on the WB network. I was once told (favorably) that I looked like Dawson, which may have been the inciting incident to my lifelong tracking of The Beek's career. However, I opted not to see the movie when it came out for a few reasons. First, it was rated R, so there was a perceived obstacle with the age restriction (the lack of interest in football in my circle of friends should give you an idea of our squareness). Second, the advertising made the movie look really dumb. Say it with me now: "I don't want. Yer lahf."

Sadly, this movie did not impress. It's your basic Texas football story: Football = God, the coach is an asshole, and the lead is an underdog of sorts. There's no twist on the formula and there's really not much going on in the town of West Canaan. The central conflict involves Mox (Van Der Beek) coping with his new celebrity status as the replacement quarterback after the first string busts his leg. Now Mox has to work more closely with the coach (Jon Voight) who hates him, fend off the advances of the whipped-cream-bikini-clad lead cheerleader (Ali Larter, who should not be cast in anything), and making sure the other players achieve their high school football hopes and dreams. Eh. We're forced to believe that Mox's life is so hard, you guys. However, his plain Jane girlfriend calls him a whiner (which he is) and basically says "if things suck so much, why don't you just quit?" I guess the moral is along the lines of "triumph through adversity," but things aren't really adverse even in the hyperbolic high school student sense.

The biggest obstacle for me with Varsity Blues is that it did not represent my high school experience at all. A film that gets about as close as any film can in emulating my experience is the 2011 documentary Fordson: Faith, Fasting, Football. I graduated from Fordson in 2001, three months before 9/11. This relationship bears significance because when I attended the school its population was approximately 85% Middle Eastern descent. Today, that number is closer to 95%. If the setting sounds familiar, the TLC series All-American Muslim took place in Dearborn and featured the same football team as one of the story arcs.

What this movie did much better than the show was provide a major social history before presenting the main narrative. Dearborn, MI was a struggling company town that has since thrived as more families moved into the area and expanded. The movie also attempted to highlight the class disparities within the town – Fordson is in the blue collar east end while rival Dearborn High is in the affluent west end. The attempts aren't a complete success, as the vehicular conspicuous consumption (sports cars and Hummers are not uncommon sights on Warren Ave) is not explained at all.

I understand from a story perspective why football was used as the focus. Football is a distinctly American game, and the purpose of the film is to show that Arab-Americans are just as American as any other demonym-Americans. The Fordson/Dearborn rivalry is one that has existed for decades and places Fordson as an underdog both from a class perspective and as the recipients of bad calls from referees. Also, a sport is much more visually interesting than, say, a person trying to open yet another restaurant in the city (which was a story arc from the reality series). However, the "Big Game" is the weakest part of the film. Despite the bad calls, Fordson won the game in a blowout, continue a long string of wins against the cakeeaters Pioneers.

I fully recommend Fordson to anyone who knows my hometown, because even though I was born and raised there I felt like I still learned something from the documentary. For people that I know personally, I would like to offer this movie as a primer of my background because there is no way I had the "typical high school experience," and I sometimes think people think I'm making stuff up (yes, our mascot really was a tractor). That being said, for just a general viewer randomly flipping through Netflix, I think the movie may be met with the same "so what?" All-American Muslim received. Which is a shame.

Change of Habit (1969)

A few notable items about this movie before we begin. First, this was Elvis Presley's last film in which he acted. Second, "In the Ghetto" does not appear in the soundtrack, though the song and film both came out in 1969. Third, Ed Asner and Mary Tyler Moore are both in the movie, and I like to think that it may have had a hand in their working together on The Mary Tyler Moore Show in 1970. If anyone runs into Ed, be sure to ask.

So, Change of Habit. Mary Tyler Moore stars as Sister Michelle, the leader of a trio of nuns who go undercover to work their nun magic in a surprisingly diverse ghetto. Even Dr. John Carpenter (Elvis) doesn't know that his three new nurses at the free clinic answer to a higher power. Which makes the "I don't do abortions" scene hilarious.

After some initial misunderstandings, the women get to work. Sister Irene (Barbara McNair) confronts some childhood demons as she does housecalls in an environment that she joined the sisterhood to escape. She encounters some Black Panther types who question her blackness, which makes her uneasy.

Sister Barbara (Jane Eliot) is best described as spunky. After tarting it up a bit to get some guys to move furniture into the women's apartment (and almost becoming an assault victim), she gets hellbent on bringing down the grocery store that consistently rips off the locals.

The major drama involves Sister Michelle. She is a speech therapist by training and has diagnosed a girl everyone thought was deaf with autism. Michelle wants to try to work with her through love and understanding, but the Doc decides that rage reduction is the way to go. And that scene ends up on film and it is as unsettling as you might imagine. But it's Elvis, so he manages to cure autism. Remember: his name is Carpenter, and Jesus was a carpenter. Anyway, Michelle falls for Elvis and has a crisis of faith.

The big event of Act II is the San Juan festival. Michelle uses it as an opportunity to release the stranglehold of The Banker, an "protection" extortionist. Barbara decides to give up the nun's life and become a full-time social activist. Michelle wants to flee to the convent so she doesn't have to choose God or the Doctor, but then she almost gets raped by another patient and Elvis saves her. Yes, that really happens. She and Irene do end up back in the convent, but John performs at the church's folk mass. The movie ends as Michelle tries to decide between Jesus or the Carpenter.

This movie is bad in the sense that it takes an incredibly superficial look at inner-city social issues. While it tries to be sharp, the presence of Elvis and MTM dulls the edge. Though if you can get through the truly offensive parts of the film (the rage reduction scene, the rape scene), Change of Habit is surprisingly watchable. To be clear, this is not a musical, though John Carpenter does sing a few songs including my favorite Elvis song "Rubberneckin'."

I think Change of Habit scores exactly 3.000000000 out of 5 stars. If there was one more cringey moment, this would be a bad movie. If the film had one more clever line, it would be a good movie. This film could be the tuning fork for just about any other movie.