Posted: 04/10/2005

Fever Pitch

(2005)

by Hank Yuloff

For those of you not tuned into amazing but true stories, let me tell you that if I had not lived Fever Pitch, I would tell you it was just a bunch of Hollywood drivel that never could come true. That was until October 2004 when the Boston Red Sox became the World Champions of Baseball. On the eve of that earth-shattering, hell-freezing-over, once-in-a-double-blue-moon month event, the writers of this film had to rework the ending to match actual events. All that being said, I believe Fever Pitch to be the greatest story ever told.*

OK… Maybe not the best, but certainly worth the price of admission.

Drew Barrymore stars as Lindsey Meeks, a business consultant who has dated up and comers like herself but to no avail. When Junior High math teacher Ben brings his students to meet someone who actually uses math in her work, she turns him down for a date because he does not fit the profile. Boy loses girl without ever having gotten her.

With encouragement from her friends, she does give him a chance and they have a wonderful winter romance. Boy GETS girl.

But with the Spring comes Spring Training and Ben has to fill Lindsey in on the awful truth that not only is he a Red Sox fan (she HAS seen his room filled with memorabilia) but he is a RED SOX FAN who has incredible seats, passed down from his uncle and has not missed a home game in 11 years. Though Lindsay is a good sport, she does draw the line when Ben would (understandably) rather go to Fenway Park than take a free trip to Paris for a weekend. Boy gives up girl for baseball.

How they come back together makes for a lot of laughs and giggles. Fallon, while not Kevin Costner when it comes to baseball movies (Bull Durham, Field of Dreams, For the Love of the Game), is completely serviceable as a Sox fan. For those of you who see this movie and think he is over the top… uh… no… he isn’t. Ask my wife. In all honesty, if Fever Pitch had the Detroit Tigers as the background, it might not make my top 10 baseball movies (add A League of Their Own, The Natural, Major League, The Sandlot, Eight Men Out, Bleacher Bums to the above) and I might say things like Barrymore is kind of hard to believe as a number crunching analyst and the scene where Fallon goes crawling back to Barrymore looks like something from How To Lose A Guy in 10 Days, but… It is NOT about those kitty cats from the Motor City, it’s about the World Champion Boston Red Sox, so I will be buying the DVD and enjoying this one over and over. Hank gets Championship giddiness.

This film, based on a Nick Hornby (About a Boy) book about a hapless English soccer team, had to have it’s ending rewritten when the Red Sox turned things around against the Evil Empire (that’s Yankees to the Non-Baseball-a-holics) and went on to the World Series. It was directed by the Farrelly brothers (Something About Mary, Shallow Hal, Dumb and Dumber) so there was bound to be some simply stupid stuff, but the movie is a very cute romantic comedy.

I predict that this movie will open HUGE in New England and with all members of Red Sox Nation (kind of like Hare Krishna, but with way cooler outfits) across the US. I also predict that it will tank in New York. But—like I care… YOU LOSERS!

*Note from the editors of FilmMonthly.com: While we truly respect Hank Yuloff’s writing skills and value his general sense of objectivity when reviewing films, but he is, after all a Red Sox fan and his eye in all things Red Sox is skewed.

Hank Yuloff is our senior L.A. staffer, and the biggest Boston Red Sox fan West of the Pecos.

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