Barrymore Saves Fever Pitch from Fallon’s Fouls

Ben Wrightman (Jimmy Fallon) is a perfectly normal high school geometry teacher. He’s not the snazziest dresser and definitely isn’t the quickest with a witty comeback. But he’s relatively nice looking and a great educator eagerly helping kids find the right direction for their lives. All-in-all, he’s one of the good guys, so why can’t he find a girlfriend?

Well, it could be he’s a major Boston Red Sox fan. No. Strike that. He’s a monumental, single-mindedly passionate Red Sox fan, one so consumed by the team and their fortunes he can’t imagine a season not sitting in his prized season-ticket seats right behind the dugout for 81-days a year. In fact, it’s almost like Ben is two different people. There’s Fall/Winter Ben, the guy easy to like and even fall in love with, and then there’s Spring/Summer Ben, a monster so consumed by a baseball team things like funerals and romantic trips to Paris are items to be missed if they just so happen to fall upon a game day.

So where is that supposed to leave current girlfriend Lindsey Meeks (Drew Barrymore), an ambitious business consultant with her eyes firmly set on both Ben and a high-profile promotion. She loves Ben, willing to make sacrifices in her busy schedule and allowances for his idiosyncrasies all because she cares passionately for him. Problem is, Lindsey’s starting to come to the startling revelation he’s not willing to do the same for her, and if this is indeed the case than no amount of love in the world can help a relationship survive when all the movement made in conciliation is happening only on one side.

Welcome to Fever Pitch, a new romantic comedy from There’s Something About Mary directors Peter and Bobby Farrelly and City Slickers writers Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel. Based on the acclaimed novel of the same name by High Fidelity author Nick Hornby (and substituting baseball for soccer), this is surprisingly sweet and moving romantic fable of strikeouts and homeruns anchored by another rapturously tender performance by Barrymore. She’s perfection, bringing equal parts warmth, sincerity, anger, compassion, confusion and unabashed love to her performance. While Lindsey isn’t a stretch for the actress that still doesn’t make her any less wonderful, Barrymore making the character a brilliantly human hummingbird fettered to the coiling tensions of a man (maybe) more in love with something not at all human and decidedly not herself.

But Barrymore isn’t the only great thing about Fever Pitch. Both the Farrelly’s and Ganz/ Mandel up their respective games to heights they haven’t touched in ages. The latter’s screenplay is their best in years, recalling even their glory days when work as stunningly fantastic as Parenthood, A League of Their Own and Night Shift seemed as easy for the duo as walking down the street. This is an adult, highly literate and refreshingly old-fashioned romance filled with crackling dialogue and shockingly decisive wit.

Due mainly to the fact these two have show this kind of talent in the past (even if their present has been anything – Father’s Day anyone? – but), the bigger surprise here is the confidently subtle direction of the Farrelly’s. For the most part, they eschew the gross-out humor and bathroom theatrics of their earlier pictures (although not completely, there are a few moments – including one vomit-fest – that show the two up to their old tricks) and Fever Pitch is all the better for it. If anything, they treat the movie almost like a documentary, following Lindsey and Ben’s romance slowly, the twists and turns evolving smoothly over the course of a highly interesting, and entertaining, year.

There is a weak link, however, and it’s a major one. Fallon is not an actor. In fact, as weak as he is on Saturday Night Live he’s barely a sketch comedian. While he’s just great during the lucidly funny “Weekend Update” segments with the brilliant Tina Fey, ask Fallon to act and the performer can’t help but fall to earth so brutally his crater goes all the way through and out the other side. I still cringe every time I think of him in last year’s colossally insipid Queen Latifah misfire Taxi, and he’s nearly as excruciating here. He mumbles through his lines, bumbles around like a pratfall school reject and jitters through the scenery like the Energizer Bunny overdosing on some particularly bad acid. Worse, he shares zero chemistry with Barrymore, something even the supremely unfunny Tom Green managed to accomplish in a smidgen of screen time in Charlie’s Angels. While I didn’t quite hate Fallon, I can’t say I liked him either, and as the majority of Fever Pitch revolves squarely around his character this is something decidedly working overtime against the movie.

Somehow this isn’t a fatal flaw, and honestly I’m not quite sure how, for lord knows it should be. Yet due mainly to the strengths of the script, directing and the shimmering presence of Barrymore Fever Pitch manages to immerge a pleasant romantic time-passer, matinee entertainment sure to make even the hardest of hearts smile (if only just a little bit). And besides, any movie that revisits and recaps the Boston Red Sox’s amazing run to the World Series has to be given at least a base hit. So what if said hit is only a bloop just out of the reach of the diving shortstop? It all still looks the same in the final box score.

Film Rating: êê1/2  (out of 4)