Big Fan All Pain and No Gain
Paul Aufiero (Patton Oswalt) and his best friend Sal (Kevin Corrigan) are die hard New York Giants fans. They live and breathe their beloved NFL football team, Paul’s favorite player vicious superstar linebacker Quantrell Bishop (Jonathan Hamm).
Patton Oswalt in First Independent Films' Big Fan
Imagine his shock and surprise when he and Sal discover the player in their neck of the woods at a rundown Staten Island gas station. Deciding to see where he goes, the pair follow his vehicle to a posh Manhattan strip club and follow him inside, Paul even going so far as to attempt to by Quantrell a drink in hopes of potentially scoring an autograph.
The Wrestler scribe Robert D. Siegel makes his directorial debut with the fiercely downbeat comedic sports drama Big Fan, a dark and oppressive saga of a sadsack perpetual loser floating through life whose obsessive behavior causes him to lose touch with reality. It is a movie I can respect more than I can like, the craftsmanship on display impressive even if the feelings it ends up conveying are anything but.
The set-up is actually rather nice. Paul is a frequent caller to late night sports talk radio, spending his afternoons at work crafting the perfect verbal witticisms sure to infuriate those not in love with his Giants. His most direct attacks are pointed at the mysterious Philadelphia Phil (Michael Rapaport), an acerbic Eagles fan who takes immense pleasure in calling his out-of-state competitors trying to get under their skin.
These scenes are great, not so much because of what Paul is saying but because of the way Siegel parallels them with the man’s barely functional everyday life. Still living with his mother (Marcia Jean Kurtz), she’s constantly breaking into his conversations imploring him to get off the phone so she can get back to sleep. He also has to deal with the fact both his siblings are far more successful than he is, trying to delude himself that he’s better off then they are because he hasn’t sold out his principals just to earn some extra dollars.
This stuff works for the film at first. But after Paul’s meeting with Quantrell goes hopeless wrong, all this gloom and doom starts to become borderline unbearable. There is no point to what is going on except to watch someone fall into a gradual pit of Taxi Driver-like despair. It gets old, fast, and by the time things culminated inside a Philadelphia bar the movie had made me feel so dirty and depressed I didn’t know whether I needed a hot shower or a handful of Zoloft.
I get the fact that The Wrestler was not exactly an upper, but where that film had heart, soul and made me feel the longing for a human connection that the main character so desperately was searching for, this one just never resonated with me. I didn’t get why Paul was such an insistent nincompoop, couldn’t fathom why his behavior kept falling so far below par. While I’m not saying he needed to turn Quantrell in or quote-quote, “do the right thing,” he did need to remain interesting and worth caring about, neither of those being traits I found myself being able to associate with him.
This would all probably not be as much of a problem if Oswalt was a strong enough actor to carry things on his own. The thing is, he isn’t, and as much as I like him in small doses like in “The United States of Tara” or as a voiceover actor like in Ratatouille, as a lead in a relatively downbeat human drama I just don’t think he works. The guy simply just doesn’t do it for me, Oswalt just never able to go deep enough to make Paul the emotionally affecting presence he needs to be.
Siegel has talent. His scripts are dark and highly personal, and he understands sports psychology, both for the fan and for the player, extremely well. But in this case I just didn’t care to be on the journey he set forth, watching Paul’s already miniscule life come crashing down around him not a game I care to participate in. While it is easy to support the effort, becoming a devotee of Big Fan is just not a thing I am prepared to do.
Film Rating: êê (out of 4)
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