Fever Pitch

Fever Pitch (Directors: Peter and Bobby Farrelly)

The Farrellys started off with a bang, firing off the trio of films Dumb and Dumber, Kingpin, and There's Something About Mary that are all classics. Then the less-than-hilarious Me, Myself, & Irene bridges the gap between the next trio of films they made, Osmosis Jones, Shallow Hal, and Stuck On You, all not close to the earlier work. This new film is based on the novel from Nick Hornby (High Fidelity, About A Boy) and was already made into a 1997 film with Colin Firth. Here, they Americanize it, changing soccer to baseball. Cool with me.

The Farrellys must have changed their tastes a bit after those three great comedies. I remember they had the uncanny ability to have gross-out gags and slapstick humor mixed in with sweet love/friendship stories. It was the perfect kind of comedy. Even though we still see jokes about cripples, their favorite staple, and an occasional off-the-wall gag, they've turned very "straight" in their comedy. Fever Pitch is the latest disappointment. While the romance between Lindsey (Drew Barrymore) and Ben (Jimmy Fallon) is an enjoyable look into couples dealing maturely with obsessive lifestyles, I counted only a couple of classic Farrelly gags in this, and no surprise, those were the funniest moments.

The story comes from Boston, where Red Sox fans were still uttering "The Curse of the Bambino" just before last year's World Series win, which changed the ending of this film. If you saw Game 4 of the Series last year, you might have seen the odd spectacle on Fox (the company that is distributing this film) of Jimmy Fallon and Drew Barrymore devouring each other while the Sox celebrated their first Series win since 1918. Ben is a high school geometry teacher and Lindsey is a business consultant, and they meet in the Winter and sparks fly. It's when Spring hits, and Ben's obsession with the Red Sox becomes known, where the first sort of chink in the armor begins. Lindsey is cool with it, though, figuring she can get more work done and get a long-awaited promotion--the movie wisely mentions that this is her own obsession--and even take in a few ballgames with her new love along the way. The obvious conflict, of course, is that Ben loves the Red Sox more than her.

I think Jimmy Fallon is great. There, I said it. I always watched "SNL" believing he was one of the funniest guys on there, and his turn in Almost Famous is super. I think when he showed up in Taxi is when people started coming out of the woodwork to say he's the worst thing since Joe Piscopo. Fallon's the reason to go see this, even though I believe Drew Barrymore may be one of the cutest, most natural beauties in film. She just doesn't have much to add to the comedy--that's the Farrellys fault. She is one of the many in the long line of Farrelly babes who are extremely game with male foibles. Not a bad film, just isn't what it could be. Damn.