Fever Pitch: Review By fredtopel

Fever Pitch is the best movie the Farrelly Brothers have been involved with in years, though it is the weakest of the recent three Nick Hornby adaptations. Granted, it’s hard to match the intellectual insight, unapologetic dark humor and true emotion of High Fidelity and About a Boy. Fever Pitch is still above average for American romantic comedy.

The conflict of a die hard sports fan’s devotion to his team versus devotion to his lover is far more interesting than the stunt-y high concepts of most. While it’s still a heightened extreme, it surely has more relevance to most of us than falling in love with a hooker or stopping somebody’s wedding.

The film takes a bit too long to establish it’s premise. It begins as a standard romantic comedy with shy Ben (Jimmy Fallon) courting smart and successful Lindsay (Drew Barrymore) in some cut situations. We don’t even see his Red Sox shrine of a bedroom until late in the first act. There was no reason to hold off on this info. It would have made some of the early stuff more interesting to see the impending doom. At least it gives Ben a life, whether you like it or not.

The actors try too hard to sell the early stuff too. Fallon makes the psycho noise, a fat girl curses her spinning instructor and somebody drops a rope that causes a pratfall. All very easy jokes. There is some real heart in the first date as Ben takes care of a sick Lindsay. That’s sweet and has plenty of gross sound effects.

Fallon especially takes a while to find his character. Sometimes he stumbles too much even to play a meek guy, but sometimes he has an impeccable sense of timing, building up an ironic reveal like the DVD selection. Since films are shot out of sequence, the good stuff is scattered throughout.

It’s when baseball season starts that the film really finds its promise though. They explore some real relationship issues with both characters experiencing something new. Their conflicts are sympathetic also because it’s new for both of them. So even when one says exactly the wrong thing, it’s more innocent than those stupid movies where everything would have been solved by a different word choice.

Even if you think, “How could you choose a baseball game over Drew Barrymore” or even “How could you even think about baseball when you’re sleeping with Drew Barrymore”, consider this. These are people set in their worlds, only exposed to this wonderful relationship for a year. Sometimes things slip, and therein lie the conflicts.

This is some real human depth, but don’t worry, it’s still funny. Fallon making La La noises when he skips a game and somebody starts talking about it nearby is pure slapstick.

Now, I never read Fever Pitch nor did I see the earlier film adaptation with Colin Firth. I don’t know how the adaptation to baseball affected the story. I know that basing scenes on the real season the Red Sox just had made the movie feel authentic, though sometimes it felt the narrative was slightly unnatural to fit in with that. But who knows, maybe it wasn’t that specific and I’m reading too much into it.

Fever Pitch is a solid romantic comedy. You’ve got a real issue that’s milked for both comedic potential and dramatic conflict. The leads are appealing and the filmmakers balance the tone well.