Ah, spring is in the air. Birds are chirping, flowers are blooming, and the Red Sox home opener is fast approaching. The time has come for Red Sox fans to ask themselves, "You love the Sox, but have they ever loved you back?"
And so comes "Fever Pitch," the tale of one man's two loves - his team and his girl - from the directing team of Bobby and Peter Farrelly, who show their true hidden romantic side. This film is far superior to their last effort, "Stuck on You," featuring Greg Kinnear and Matt Damon as conjoined twins.
"Fever Pitch" centers on the courtship of career-driven workaholic Lindsey Meeks (Drew Barrymore) and high school geometry teacher and die-hard Sox fan Ben Wrightman (Jimmy Fallon), whose apartment looks more like a souvenir shop than a bachelor pad. 'Winter' Ben and Lindsay's love blossoms over the offseason. But when spring training rolls around, Lindsey gets her first glimpse of 'Summer' Ben on an ESPN broadcast from Florida. His three loves? "The Red Sox, sex and breathing."
With "Fever Pitch," the Farrellys take a turn from their previous work. Gone is their over-the-top physical humor and any traces of the raunchiness that fans know and love from Farrelly classics like "Dumb and Dumber" and their early turn at romantic comedy, "There's Something About Mary."
For "Fever Pitch," they kept the genre but dropped the raunch (i.e. the Penis-Zipper Incident of "Mary" or the Turbo Lax Diarrhea Episode from "Dumber"). With cursing rare and nudity pretty much nonexistent, the film is still very funny. The actors actually work well for this comedy, and laughs are largely dependent on the jokes rather than on our human tendency to laugh at all things gross and uncomfortable.
That said, someone taking a high-velocity foul ball to the face will always be funny.
Perhaps it is the brothers' own life-long love for the team (they were raised in Rhode Island), that tempered their tendency towards gross-out humor. As a result, Ben's love for Lindsey and his love for the Red Sox are at once funny and touching.
The writing also helps this film; a potentially lame concept is executed well. It is based on the novel of the same title, written by Nick Hornby ("High Fidelity") about a soccer-loving schoolteacher from the UK. It was adapted for the Farrelly film by Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel, (co-writers of "Splash" and "A League of Their Own," amongst other comedy hits).
Barrymore, simply put, carries the movie. Her prowess in the romantic comedy genre is set, and she out-acts the film novice Fallon throughout. Although she spends most of the film flanked by a bevy of obnoxious girlfriends that the audience wants nothing more than to hit with a baseball bat, Barrymore shines. She is likable and intelligently funny (unlike her turn in "Never Been Kissed") and towards the end of the film, her emotions seem genuine and unlabored. This poses a stark contrast to Fallon, who needs some serious work in the drama department.
Fallon is entertaining, particularly early on in the film, and the fans find themselves almost as attracted to his sense of humor and goofy charm as Lindsey is. He also interacts well with his group of Sox-loving friends, including Willie Garson ("Sex and the City's" Standford Blatch) as a nerdy anesthesiologist.
However, his acting flies more toward the foul line as the film progresses for two reasons. First, Jimmy Fallon is in no way believable as a math teacher. Even though his character is the "cool" teacher that all the kids love, it is not possible to see how he would be trusted to mold young minds.
Secondly, the "Saturday Night Live"-trained actor is accustomed to sketch comedy. As the film progresses and requires Fallon to portray actual emotions, he is simply unable to keep up with the far more experienced Barrymore. While the audience certainly believes that he is struggling to choose between Lindsey and his beloved team, he lacks the acting chops to make us care quite as much as we should. After all, his only other feature film is "Taxi." With that in mind, he has shown growth with his turn in "Fever Pitch" and could grow into something much greater in future endeavors.
As with any Farrelly movie, the small characters are more than memorable. Deserving of special mention are Ben's fellow season ticket holders, his "summer family." There is one couple who have been divorced twenty years but still share the tickets; there's two 40-something women with (mercifully) unfaked Boston accents who comment on Johnny Damon "sweet ass." And then there is sponge salesman and narrator Hal Waterman, the first person Ben met at his first Red Sox game as a seven-year-old.
"Fever Pitch" is for fans of the Red Sox as much as it is for fans of romantic comedy. It features nostalgic clips of actual game footage, none of which is simulated. The fans are real, the players are real, and the emotion is real. As the movie progresses, it is like reliving the ups and downs of that special season; as the season's momentum increases, so does that of the film.
Romantic camera shots of Fenway Park and the city of Boston are enough to set any Bostonian's heart aflutter. Of course, a Yankee fan may not find the film or Ben's Yankee toilet paper quite so funny or romantic.
The Farrelly brothers may be the luckiest men alive for endeavoring to create this film in the year that the Sox finally reversed the Curse, but, truthfully, Boston fans are lucky to have such a touching tribute to the most memorable season of most of their lives.
