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 supposed to be an adaptation of Nick Hornby's book "Pitch Fever". Only in the book Hornby himself is the main character. And he hasn't got an obsession with baseball, but with soccer. The rest is the same as in the movie, though. Or is it? The truth is "Fever Pitch" has almost nothing to do with the book. It has not so much been based on as it has been inspired by Hornby's novel. On its own "Fever Pitch" is a pretty romantic movie that tries to avoid going over the top with its humor most of the time. Jimmy Fallon and Drew Barrymore try their best not to be unbearable and succeed more or less. The Farrelly brothers clearly took the Weitz brothers as an example for how to get out of the dick joke business into more mature movies. Of course, "Fever Pitch" doesn't hold a candle to the wonderful "About A Boy", but you have to say that the Farrellys were given weaker material to work with in the first place. In its best moments the movie makes you chuckle and in its worst it makes you yawn and look at your watch. Yep, the big problem with "Fever Pitch" is that it drags on too long. Stripped from Hornby's hilarious observations on his favorite sport and its connections to his own life the story just isn't very interesting (which has also already been the problem with the first adaptation of the novel). What do we learn from that? Just because an author is popular doesn't mean that all his novel translate well to film. J.D. Salinger had a reason why he denied film makers to ever adapt his stories, you know?

My daughter gets really put out at me when I refer to Drew Barrymore as looking as if she'd been hit in the face with a frying pan, not to mention her Dudley Dooright chin that Jay Leno would die for. How wonderful, then, when I discovered in "Fever Pitch" that I really like Miss Barrymore; and Jimmy Fallon; and the Red Sox; and Boston! This film is probably best characterized as a sweet, light comedy. To be absolutely stereotypical, the girls will like the movie for its romantic charm and Jimmy Fallon's vulnerability, and the boys will like it for all the male bonding and the depiction of sports mania.

My sports-hating wife, my teenage daughter, and I all found something to like in the film. That says something in itself. It's a pleasant way to spend an hour and a half or so, and is probably a really good date flic, too.

"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.

"Fever Pitch" shows what obsessions or deep passions can do to a relationship when both partners don't share the same thing or at least at the same level. Ben (Jimmy Fallon) is a devout Red Sox fan. He is a fanatic. He goes to every game, his apartment looks like a Fenway Park gift shop, and he goes to Florida every spring to watch the team play in spring training when the games don't count. Lindsey (Drew Barrymoore) is a young executive on her way up in the real world and is more or less married to her job. When the two of them eventually go out on their first date, she gets really sick, and he stays the night and takes care of her. This blows her away and she is sold. The relationship is full steam ahead, but the problem is that it's wintertime and baseball season hasn't gotten started yet. She doesn't know what she is in for.

Naturally, the Red Sox get in the way. Lindsey tries to be a good sport about it and even tries to learn the game and the two of them actually start going to games together and she becomes a fan as well. But things get out of hand when the team gets closer and closer to the playoffs and thats when problems arise.

"Fever Pitch" is cute, sweet, and has some funny moments. Jimmy Fallon is well cast and Drew Barrymoore isn't as annoying as she normally is. But there isn't anything really special about this film. Much of the arc in this film is very conventional and everyone already knows how the season turns out. Let's face it. Romantic comedies really need to be original or have something different to them to escape many of the typical clichés in this genre. At least it didn't take place in Manhattan like most of these films. "Fever Pitch" would make a nice rental and its a pretty good date film. (***)