Fever Pitch
With Jimmy Fallon, Drew Barrymore, Lenny Clarke, Jack Kehler, James B. Sikking, and Ione Skye
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Fever Pitch, the latest feature from shock-comedy siblings Peter and Bobby Farrelly, is based on Hornby’s 1992 debut book, a diaristic nonfiction account of his lifelong obsession with English soccer. Hornby himself scripted a 1997 British adaptation featuring Colin Firth, which seems to have been the starting point for this passable romantic comedy, in which a maniacally devoted Boston Red Sox fan (Jimmy Fallon) is forced to grow up when he falls for an ambitious professional woman (Drew Barrymore). Barrymore is so effortlessly funny that the movie isn’t a complete loss, but it’s interesting only insofar as the Farrelly brothers’ patented brand of arrested development contrasts with Hornby’s.
Like many Farrelly characters Ben (Fallon) needs to grow up: his bedroom looks like it belongs to an 11-year-old, with Red Sox bedsheets and walls covered in team memorabilia. A middle school teacher, he’s still impetuous enough to throw a football to a student in the hall; when it hits a fellow teacher in the head, he nabs another student as the culprit and then lets him off later. During a field trip to a financial services firm he meets Lindsey (Barrymore), a go-getter who’s never found the right guy. Captivated by his sweetness and wit, she begins to have second thoughts about their romance when the extent of his obsession becomes evident. He begs off on meeting her parents so he can attend spring training in Florida (she and her father see him on ESPN, jumping around like an idiot), and he turns down a romantic weekend in Paris because it conflicts with a game. The one night he manages to tear himself away from Fenway Park to spend time alone with her, the Sox pull off a late-inning rally in his absence, and he reacts childishly, sending their relationship into a tailspin.
Ganz and Mandel don’t have to deal with anything as sobering as a large-scale human disaster at Fenway Park; in the Americanized Fever Pitch the key historical incident is Boston’s surprise victory in last year’s World Series, which reversed an 86-year curse. Consistent with that happy milestone, the movie settles on a blandly sunny view of the hero’s obsession, one that favors community over consumption. Ben has held onto his father’s season tickets for decades, and he’s part of a little clique of sitcom-wacky Red Sox fans who attend every game; the movie overtly contrasts them with Lindsey’s friends, who are all rich, self-absorbed yuppies. The movie’s sentiment is nothing new for the Farrelly brothers, but its complacency certainly is; I can’t help but think that scores of people being trampled at a sports event would be more up their twisted alley.
