Nearly as good as the average episode of TV’s “Friday Nights Lights,” which makes it better than most movies and one of the better sports films of recent years.

There's no question that a soft-spoken person can be a great leader, but Caviezel underplays Ladouceur to the point that you wonder how the players could even hear him, much less be inspired by him.

For all the pains the movie takes to explain why someone shouldn’t play football—to win, to be a star, to defeat others — it never bothers to explain why someone should play the game. It’s a collection of well-intentioned absences with no defining presence to speak of.

When the Game Stands Tall is a solid if unsurprising and uninspiring melodrama.

It’s an impossible standard, maybe, but in 42 minutes, TV’s "Friday Night Lights" delivered all-star-level emotional complexity and action. When the Game Stands Tall is strictly JV squad.