Reception and Legacy
The film opened at #1 at the North American box office making $17.5 million USD in its opening weekend. Though the film had a 39.6% decline in earnings, it was still enough to keep the film at the top spot for another week.
Critical reception was mixed; the film has a 40% ("Rotten") approval rating from 52 reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, with the consensus "This is a predictable football movie that lacks intensity." Roger Ebert noted in his Chicago Sun-Times review that "Scenes work, but they don't pile up and build momentum." ReelViews online film critic James Berardinelli's summary was that although the film "takes a worthwhile detour or two, it ultimately finds its way back to the well-worn track of its genre."
It was later parodied in the 2001 film Not Another Teen Movie, in which Ron Lester reprised his role of Billy Bob by playing a near identical character named Reggie Ray. Ali Larter's whipped cream bikini was also parodied.
Read more about this topic: Varsity Blues (film)
Famous quotes containing the words reception and/or legacy:
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)
“What is popularly called fame is nothing but an empty name and a legacy from paganism.”
—Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466–1536)