Fever Pitch

This romantic sports comedy is not especially creative, the performances are not especially memorable, the script lacks structure (at least until the start of baseball season provides an external one), and the directing is often slapdash. But there's a saving grace of lovable-loser charm in the underlying, never-say-die, fantasized (even fetish-ized) commitment of schoolteacher Ben (Jimmy Fallon) to his beloved Boston Red Sox, and his authentic eternal optimism that insane fandom won't kill a new relationship--with the first girl he's ever loved as much as baseball. During the winter of 2003, Ben falls for an out-of-his-league business consultant (Drew Barrymore), and she falls for him--after being convinced by her girlfriends to give up aggressive, career-driven yuppies. The offbeat sweetness of this opposites-attract couple and their inevitable conflict over baseball feel much more authentic than the snowballing little lies and contrived misunderstandings that drive most romantic comedies. Flawed but enjoyable, this love letter to underdog devotion takes the plot all the way through the playoffs, then stops dead in its tracks to encapsulate the miracle World Series in a throwaway voiceover, abandoning a gift-horse climax for anticlimactic exposition. Based on Nick Hornby's soccer memoir of the same name (filmed in 1997 with Colin Firth and Ruth Gemmell), this is a strong optional purchase.. [Note: Available in either widescreen or full screen versions, and a widescreen collector's edition, DVD extras include audio commentary by directors Peter and Bobby Farrelly, 13 deleted scenes (19 min.), a Fox Movie Channel “Making a Scene” featurette (8 min.), a six-minute gag reel, the “Break the Curse” and “Love Triangle” Internet featurettes (5 min. total), and trailers. Bottom line: a solid extras package for a sporadically entertaining film.] (R. Blackwelder)