Fever Pitch

First off I’m a huge fan of Nick Hornby and I’ve been pleased with each movie made from his books, from High Fidelity to About a Boy to the earlier Fever Pitch, which starred Colin Firth and was about the real obsession of the book, for the English football team Arsenal, rather than baseball’s Red Sox as in this remake. I remember the book most fondly for making me weep with laughter over pages on which half the words had no meaning to me at all, since I know nothing about soccer. But I recognized it immediately as an eloquent and spirited addition to the literature of fanship (cf. A Fan’s Notes, Shoeless Joe, and The Celebrant.) Now the Farrelly brothers have brought their slack but genial brand of filmmaking to the theme, with some authentic credentials as Red Sox fans, only to find themselves in the middle of a too-strange-for-fiction story. Now I’m no Sox fan, so for me the best thing about last season’s miracle is that it will shut up, for once and all, the whining of New England sports fans, who will be forced to acknowledge that the most pitiable fans of all come from Cleveland, like yours truly. Nonetheless I am attuned enough to the terrible mythos of the Green Monster to relish this loving retrospect, on a place in the sun in a season to remember. Oh yeah, the romantic comedy thing works pretty well too, with both Drew Barrymore and Jimmy Fallon proving to be appealing performers worth rooting for. Some of the local Boston color comes through, but I’ve seen documentaries that got much closer to the heart of Red Sox mania. So this is fantasy from start to finish, with the odd and piquant part being that the fantasy comes true. (2005, Regal, n.) *7* (MC-57, RT-59.)