How far should obsessed sports fans go in their devotion to their favorite team? This is a question many have posed and that no one has a clear answer. Some people have the capacity to limit their consumption of sports if something very important takes place. Others have a more difficult time and would consider abandoning their favorite sports franchise only if it was a matter of life and death. The struggle to balance sports with one’s personal life is the subject of this movie, Fever Pitch, a film about love, baseball, and sacrifice.
Movie Facts:
Rating: PG-13
Format: Color
Director: Bobby Farrelly, Peter Farrelly
Screenplay/Writing Credits: Nick Hornby, Lowell Ganz, Babaloo Mandell
Theatrical Release Date: April 8, 2005
Movie Length: 103 Minutes
Cast: Drew Barrymore, Jimmy Fallon, Jack Kehler, Ione Skye, KaDee Strickland, Marissa Winokur, Lenny Clarke, James Sikking, Evan Helmuth, Brett Murphy, Isabella Fink, Maureen Keiller, Scott Severance, Jessamy Finet.
Contents of This Movie:
Ben (played by Jimmy Fallon) is a man with an obsession. He is a die- hard Boston Red Sox fan and he and his family have been waiting for decades for their beloved Sox to win the World Series. He has great seats, located very close to the home team’s dugout and he hasn’t missed a game in ages.
As much as Ben loves his Sox and devotes so much of his time to the team, there is one thing that eventually gets in the way of his first love: a woman. Her name is Lindsey Meeks (played by Drew Barrymore) and Ben is smitten by her. She falls for him, too, and the couple seems headed on the track toward romance.
Lindsey’s friends, including Robin (played by KaDee Strickland), Sarah (played by Marissa Winokur), and others are a little apprehensive about Ban at first because they feel his occupation (high school teacher) isn’t good enough for someone as successful as Lindsey. But they and Lindsey quickly learn that one’s occupation is an insignificant obstacle to romance when compared to a total obsession with a professional sports team.
Final Thoughts:
“Fever Pitch” is a pretty good romantic comedy about a man and his two loves: Baseball and a young woman. The film follows a guy around his native Boston as he attempts to balance his life between the sport he loves and the woman he can’t live without.
In this movie, actor Jimmy Fallon plays a nice guy who is charming and fun- loving. Quick with a semi- humorous one- liner, Fallon wins the heart of Drew Barrymore’s character quickly with his humor and good nature. He confesses his interest in her and she in him and it looks like they are going to live life happily every after. But his love of the Boston Red Sox is causing much friction between the happy couple. He doesn’t want to miss any games, ever- even if it means missing out on something very important to Barrymore. She seems tolerant of his excesses at first, but slowly begins to lose patience as she witnesses more and more of Fallon’s behavior. The tension builds and Fallon is forced to decide what really matters in life: baseball or the woman of his dreams.
The basic plot of this movie is simple and it stays on an even course throughout the film. I have known some people who were sports addicts so I can relate in some ways to the basic premise of this movie. I have known friends who broke off dates, faked being sick, and used assorted excuses to avoid leaving the house when their team was about to take the field. Jimmy Fallon’s character in this movie is, however, a step beyond what I have experienced in real life. There is one scene in the film, for instance, where Fallon turns down a weekend in Paris, France with Barrymore because there is an important Red Sox home game during that time. This is a little more obsessive than I have experienced, but I’m sure there are some people out there who really are this addicted to their favorite team.
Even though elements of this film mirror real- life experiences for many, there are still some important ingredients missing from this movie that prevent it from being a better film. First of all, the story line is very direct and unsophisticated. There are no great surprises in this movie (except perhaps near the end when Barrymore is attempting to stop Fallon from selling his season tickets) and most of it moves along according to formula. The writing for this film includes some decent attempts at humor, but it is really too simple overall to be a great movie. As I watched, I kept waiting for an interesting twist to the plot, but nothing like that ever occurred. It starts with some baseball scenes; moves to the point where Barrymore and Fallon meet; follows the obsession with baseball and the strain it is causing on the relationship; and ends with both parties happy with their final decision on how best to balance sports and romance. It’s not a bad script, but it’s nothing terribly exciting either. It’s only semi- interesting moments are those where it attempts to answer certain social questions like 1. Should it matter that a man makes less money and has a less prestigious occupation than the woman he is interested in? 2. How far is a person permitted to obsess with a sports team (or anything else) before it becomes abnormal? and 3. What level of compromise is appropriate in a situation such as this one? These are not easy questions to answer and the movie, while it does make attempts, pretty much leaves these issues wide open to further debate.
Of the performers in this movie, I enjoyed Drew Barrymore and Jimmy Fallon best. They offered some good chemistry and they were cute and appealing as a couple. More importantly, they seemed real- like couples I have known in my lifetime. There was a pretty good supporting cast to back them up as well, even though I could have done without some of the girlfriends.
Overall, “Fever Pitch” is a nice, feel- good type of movie that leaves you generally satisfied and also gets you thinking about this type of problem and how it should be handled between two mature adults. A more sophisticated script would have done wonders for this film but I still liked it well enough to give it a small recommendation.
According to Red Sox super-fan Ben Wrightman (Jimmy Fallon), finding romance is about as likely as his beloved team winning the World Series. But when...More at HotMovieSale.com
According to Red Sox super-fan Ben Wrightman (Jimmy Fallon), finding romance is about as likely as his beloved team winning the World Series. But when...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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