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'Fever Pitch' doesn't satisfy ambition
Drew Barrymore
Ava Gerlitz/Twentieth Century Fox
Director: Peter Farrelly, Bobby Farrelly
Stars: Drew Barrymore, Jimmy Fallon, JoBeth Williams
MPAA rating: PG-13 for crude and sexual humor and some sensuality
It says something that their strongest script, "Mr. Saturday Night," flopped at the boxoffice. They could afford the setback on a resume that includes such hits and blockbusters as "Night Shift," "Splash," "Parenthood," two "City Slickers," "A League of Their Own," the Eddie Murphy version of "Dr. Doolittle" and the current "Robots."
Add such lower-scoring Ganz-Mandel films as "Spies Like Us," "Multiplicity" and "Father's Day" and you get a clearer portrait of a shrewd duo who dumb-down almost every subject they touch.
With exceptions, including the observant "City Slickers," they write like enthusiastic teenagers who never research their subjects or think about the way their characters would behave OUTSIDE a sitcom.
This weakness pervades "Fever Pitch," the kind of film that places great emphasis on the fact that heroine Lindsey (Drew Barrymore) is a committed, ambitious corporate climber but gives nary a hint of how she does her job.
The screenplay, adapted from Nick Hornby's book about a guy obsessed with English football, reasonably enough switches the focus to baseball.
Ben (Jimmy Fallon), introduced to Boston Red Sox baseball by a lump of an uncle some 23 years earlier, has inherited his late uncle's Fenway Park box seats and not missed an inning in 11 years.
Ben is a high school teacher -- honors geometry, no less. But Ben will be characterized as a good motivator of students but one who delights them by undermining the principal's authority and making faces.
He and Lindsey meet when they're closing in on their 30th birthdays.
But because they meet in the off-season, they've been living together for several months before his obsession kicks in -- his trip to spring training, his imbecilic behavior before ESPN cameras, his irrational manners when dining with her parents (James B. Sikking and JoBeth Williams) and his lack of access -- for such a bright guy -- to self-reflection.
This isn't even a functioning love story. It's a bedroom collision worked out in the name of modernity for the convenience of an ill-conceived female character and a Peter Pan du jour.
It wants to be about compromises over priorities, but it doesn't satisfy that ambition.
The story unfolds, incidentally, during 2003-04, making Ben a dedicated fan of a team that hadn't won the World Series in his lifetime.
History tells us the Sox made it to the series and finally won. The film apparently was so far along by October '04 that the victory -- a natural movie drama highlight -- is barely footnoted.
