Fever Pitch
reviewed by Ryan Ellis
April 12, 2005
'Fever Pitch' has lots of baseball in it. That's a great start. It was
directed by Peter & Bobby Farrelly, written by Lowell Ganz & Babaloo Mandel
(who adapted Nick Hornby's book), and its headliner is the perky & lovable
Drew Barrymore. Her on-screen partner in this rom-com pitch 'n' catch is
Jimmy Fallon, who's made people grin on "Saturday Night Live". And the final
sequence recaps the classic 2004 postseason when the Boston Red Sox finally
trumped the New York Yankees and then won their first World Series in 10,000
years. That sounds like the makings of a terrific little film.
Sounds like, yes. Is, no. That's right, I'm being a grump and giving 'Fever
Pitch' the raspberry. First of all, it's not very funny, which is a
surprise. The Farrellys have 86ed the gross-out gags in their last few
projects, but this softer style is not serving them well. In fairness,
they're not bad at genuine sincerity (in fact, in 'Shallow Hal' they guided
Gwyneth Paltrow through some of the most heartbreaking scenes in any comedy
since John Candy's wonderful performance in 'Planes, Trains And
Automobiles'), but their strength has been going for huge laughs with broad
comedy. 'Fever Pitch' only made me LOL once, although it's got 2 or 3
sideways jokes that I seemed to think were funnier than everyone else in the
theatre did (including a reference to Yankees toilet paper).
Other actors pop their heads in along the way, but none of them make much of
an impression. I recognized Jo-Beth Williams (playing Barrymore's mom) and
Ione Skye (playing Drew's friend). And Boston's cavemanlike centre fielder,
Johnny Damon, is a good enough sport to appear in a few scenes. Other than
that, this one's all about Lindsey (Barrymore) and Ben (Fallon). He's a
teacher and she's an ad exec (or some type of mid-falutin' stress magnet).
Since everybody falls for Drew Barrymore and she's contractually obligated
to fall for Jimmy Fallon, they hook up and quickly fall in love.
Turns out, this salt-of-the-earth fella wouldn't miss a Red Sox game if
Fenway Park fell over while this businesswoman-about-to-land-the-big-account
can't relate to his overwhelming passion for a sports team. Cultures clash
and they don't seem to know how to bridge the gap. Welcome to a
relationship, kids. Hinjinks ensue and, well, it's not a particularly
amusing brand of hijinxery. Everybody is nice and generally polite, but the
whole piece is really quite tepid.
So if a comedy is not going to be a raucous jokefest, then the story had
better sing. Grump time again. I didn't buy Jimmy & Drew as a couple. Worse,
their "he loves the Red Sox more than her" and "she's a workaholic" dynamic
is a rerun of something we've seen too many times before. I don't blame her
for being a bit frustrated that he's obsessed about baseball in Boston. But
a message I've never liked in modern films crops up here (just as it did in
another of Hornby's books/movies, 'About A Boy')---hedonists must give up
their hedonistic passions and become conformists or they'll spend the rest
of their lives in lonely misery.
And I resent that. Movies have always been about a character's eventual
realization that lifestyle changes must be made before the credits roll, but
'Fever Pitch' is almost fascist about it. The movie insists that until
Fallon stops putting the Red Sox above sex and breathing, he's unworthy of
love. Drew Barrymore is too nice to give such outright ultimatums, but
that's what her message boils down to. This says a lot about me, but on
those conditions, I'd take baseball over the babe.
'Fever Pitch' tries to have it both ways with its ridiculous climax where
baseball and romance finally come together as one. Whee. All it took was for
our little Drew to do something crazy enough to get herself arrested, and
somehow stave off the official arrest procedure until, by golly, she said
what she had to say. At least the movie was realistic until that point. A
romantic comedy can be a pure fantasy, you say, just so long as it's got the
required-by-law happy ending? Okay, the movie COULD live without a realistic
final scene. What it couldn't live without is what it doesn't have---stars
who have chemistry, a story with a hint of originality, and, most of all,
laughs.
To throw some curves at me, write to ryan222@rogers.com
========== X-RAMR-ID: 39688 X-Language: en X-RT-ReviewID: 1382835 X-RT-TitleID: 1144232 X-RT-AuthorID: 1446
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews