Fever Pitch

In the new movie “Fever Pitch,” Drew Barrymore plays a workaholic cutie
who has the great misfortune to fall in love with a rabid Red Sox fan.
The movie starts weakly and ends implausibly, but manages to capture
the depth and breadth of one man’s sports obsession and how that
obsession nearly contributes to his personal ruin.

Jimmy Fallon plays Ben, a Boston high school teacher whose sensitivity
and genuineness attracts Lindsay Meeks’s (Barrymore) hesitating
interest. Their romance blooms over the winter, but Lindsay’s
30-something friends wonder why Ben is still available. Any single man
their age must be fatally flawed. Finally Ben confesses – he loves the
Red Sox with a passion so profound that Ben’s romance calendar is
forced to squeeze into the spaces left by the Red Sox’s open dates, a
circumstance that begins in Spring Training.

At first Lindsay is accommodating – plenty of guys love sports, she
says, and she’s not the neurotic attention-seeker who is threatened by
that – but when the dog days hit, Lindsay finds out how profound, and
hurtful, Ben’s obsession can be. When Ben finally skips a game – and a
Yankees game at that – to go with her to a special occasion, their
relationship appears to finally make an important breakthrough, only to
have the specter of Ben’s Red Socked mistress appear at the most
improbable and painful moment.

The movie also captures the wider communal passion of Bostoners for
their team. Ben’s friends turn the arrival of that year’s season
tickets into a day-long celebration. The regulars who populate Ben’s
section at Fenway are Ben’s substitute family who feel the bone-deep
pathos of Red Sox history. Although Lindsay gamely attempts to fit into
Ben’s odd social circle, her efforts are only partly successful and
ultimately increase the tension between Ben’s deepening life with her
and his passion for his team.

The formula works, mostly because of the performance and chemistry
between Barrymore and Fallon. Both play characters who are as
sympathetic as they are flawed, and the romance and, especially, their
subsequent troubles ring true. The result is the ultimate movie paradox
– a chick flick for guys; the sports fanatic’s ultimate romantic
fantasy, and one that can succeed with women. It’s a date-movie for
two.

The movie has choppy moments. Early scenes with Barrymore seem flat and
uninspired, and the climatic moment – which includes a slapstick chase
through the Fenway’s centerfield during a playoff game – has a degree
of unbelievability that can ruin the spell for any knowledgeable
baseball fan. Only a little more minor is the hairdressing disaster
that strikes every female role in this movie – Barrymore most violently
– and which should justly send a dozen Hollywood hairdressers to the
unemployment line.

Even so, the movie manages to capture complex emotion and a variety of
evolving interpersonal entanglements in a way that seems real and deep.
Baseball fans will value the real game footage and the on-location
filming (although one scene announces Rocco Baldelli’s turn at bat
during a Texas Rangers game) which doesn’t just bring Fenway to life,
but also brings it and its inhabitants vibrant personality. Movie buffs
will enjoy the powerful onscreen relationships and the movie’s
undeniable sense of place. Although it doesn’t have the pin-point
artistry of Greg Maddux, “Fever Pitch” still finds its location.