Terrain d'entente

Fever Pitch is a fun enough movie. It has a lot of funny moments (including a hilariously disturbing shower scene). Like most romantic comedies, it has a "dead zone" in the middle where all the heavy, "she's breaking up with me" stuff happens, but other than that it continues to be funny until the end.

Even though the plot revolves around fanaticism towards the Red Sox, it's not overloaded with sports. You don't have to be a fan to enjoy this film.

Of course that's easy for me to say: I've been a Red Sox fan since I was a boy, too.

7 out of 10.

Barky

"Fever Pitch" is a sweet and charming addition to the small genre of sports romances as date movies or movies a son could be willing to go to with his mother (though the guys in the audience got noticeably restless during the romantic scenes).

I have lived through a milder version of such a story, as my first exposure to baseball was dating my husband the spring after the Mets first World Series win and then I watched the Mets clinch their next one because I was the one still up in the wee hours with our two little sons, who have grown up to teach me more about baseball through our local neighborhood National League team's other heartbreaking failures to win it again (and it was me who took our older son to his only Fenway Park game as I caught a bit of Red Sox fever as a graduate student in Boston).

So compared to reality, the script believably creates two people with actual jobs. It is particularly impressive that Drew Barrymore's character is a substantive workaholic who has anti-Barbie skills, though she pretty much only visits with her three bland girlfriends during gym workouts that allow for much jiggling and the minor side stories with her parents don't completely work.

It is even set up credibly how she meets Jimmy Fallon's math teacher and how she falls for his "winter guy" -- though it's surprising that his Red Sox paraphernalia filled apartment didn't tip her off to his Jekyll-and-Hyde "summer guy." Their relationship crisis during the baseball season is also played out in a refreshingly grown-up way, from efforts at compromise to her frank challenges to him, centered around that they are both facing thirty and single. Fallon surprisingly rises to his character's gradual emotional maturity.

While the ending borrows heavily from O. Henry, the script writers did a yeoman job of quickly incorporating the Sox's incredible 2004 season into a revised story line (with lots of cooperation from the Red Sox organization for filming at the stadium).

The script goes out of its way to explain why Fallon doesn't have a Boston accent, as an immigrant from New Jersey, but that doesn't explain why his motley friends don't. The most authentic sounding Boston sounds come from most of his "summer family" of other season ticket holders, who kindly kibitz the basics of Sox lore to neophyte Barrymore (and any such audience members).

The song selection includes many Red Sox fans' favorites, from the opening notes of the classic "Dirty Water," though most are held to be heard over the closing credits as if you are listening to local radio and are worth sitting through to hear.

The Farrelly brothers, Bobby and Peter, are at it again. With "Fever Pitch" the creators of other films that have dealt with a lot of gross themes, abandon that tactic when they decided to bring Nick Hornby's film to the screen, something that it would have been hard to do. The novel, of the same title, dealt with a man's obsession with soccer, since it is set in England, where that sport consumes most of British sports fans. It's to the credit of the writing team of Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandell, to transform the book into a language that would appeal to most Americans, when they make their hero, a Boston Red Sox fan.

"Fever Pitch" is a film that presents an obsessive fan, Ben Wrightly, whose life revolves into the Red Sox season, and who is an eighth grade teacher with uncanny ways for involving his students into the subject he tries to teach them. When Ben takes four of his best pupils for a tour of a local firm, he meets, and falls hopelessly in love with the brainy Lindsey Meeks, a young woman who is going places, but at thirty, has no life of her own.

The story follows the two lovers through the ritual of attending the Red Sox, at home games, in Fenway Park. This team's fans are probably the most loyal people in the world, having stuck with a team that does marvelous things but, until 2004, never won a World Series. In fact, the ending, from what we heard, had to be changed because that was the year in which they finally won the event that had eluded them for eighty six years! Drew Barrymore and Jimmy Fallon are perfect as the couple at the center of the film. Ms. Barrymore is a natural who always surprises in her appearances in front of the camera. Jimmy Fallon, a popular television comedian, turned movie actor, has a better opportunity here than in his last appearance in "Taxi", in our humble opinion.

The Farrelly brothers film will satisfy their fans as well as baseball fans with this baseball tale.

I saw this movie on Thursdays night after having a really boring day. I had no expectations, those I had were rather negative. Being that the only movie I've ever watched Jimmy in is the American version of Taxi with Queen Latifah(?)...don't ask why! But seriously..this movie is so cute! Drew Barrymore is always sweet, but I almost fell in love with Fallon's character. Why can't I meet a cute nerd like that. :) Movies like that are excellent. Simple, sweet and necessary. Sunday on a Thursdays. I'm not even a sports fan, but it's something about American movies with baseball that fascinates me. Probably the fact that we don't have that sport here in Norway.

(My first comment ever.) Haha

I went to see Fever Pitch with my Mom, and I can say that we both loved it. It wasn't the typical romantic comedy where someone is pining for the other, and blah blah blah... You weren't waiting for the climatic first kiss or for them to finally get together. It was more real, because you saw them through the relationship, rather than the whole movie be about them getting together. People could actually relate to the film, because it didn't seem like extraordinary circumstances, or impossible situations. It was really funny, and I think it was Jimmy Fallon's best performance. All in all... I would definitely recommend it!