Fever Pitch: Baseball Gods Bless the Rom Com

Getting a film made is extremely difficult, from writing the script to securing the financing, and getting a good film made can be even harder, from getting the right casting to coordinating the shoot. And sometimes, getting some of those elements right combines with timing in the cultural zeitgeist for a film to become a defining moment in society. Fever Pitch (2005), directed by the Farrelly brothers, misses on several fronts, but had incredible timing with the rise of the Boston Red Sox’s improbable journey to winning the 2004 World Series, elevating a sub-par rom com to a par rom com, due to a quirk in timing by the baseball gods.

Ben Wrightman (Jimmy Fallon) is a school teacher with a huge obsession for the Boston Red Sox baseball team. He meets Lindsey Meeks (Drew Barrymore), an executive who is majorly out of his league, but after an eventful first date, the two nevertheless hit it off and begin dating. Their romance goes well....until baseball season hits and she sees the true depths of his devotion to the team. Wrightman is a season ticket holder and there are 81 home games in a the baseball schedule - a long and grueling season for a casual fan, but even more demanding when your new boyfriend insists on attending every single game and cheering with the passion of a thousand burning suns. After an embarrassing incident compels Meeks to stop attending games, their relationship takes a turn when she dares to ask him to miss one game for a date night out. He initially enjoys the quality time with his girlfriend, but when he misses a particularly exciting Red Sox game, he immediately regrets the night away from baseball. This strain ends their relationship. Wrightman comes to regret his decision to choose baseball over the love of his life, so he decides to sell his season tickets. Meeks races to the ballpark to stop him, dramatically running across the field in the middle of the game to ensure he doesn’t lose his passion and to declare her love for him. To cap off their reunion, the Red Sox manage to win the World Series that year, with Ben and Lindsey attending the championship game as a great start to their new life together. 

Jimmy Fallon is now known for hosting The Tonight Show and before that a great career on Saturday Night Live. Many alumni of that award-winning show attempt to translate their personas to a successful acting career and Fallon was no exception when he left the program in 2004. Fallon only managed to headline two movies before he made his way back to television as a host. Fever Pitch is exhibit A in why this transition took place; Fallon is just not up to the level of Barrymore in regards to acting chops. Barrymore is hustling hard to convince viewers that her strong, accomplished, and competent female executive would fall for a rambling immature boyman with a terrible haircut. Suffice to say, their chemistry is sorely lacking for a romantic comedy pairing; she is simply not weird enough to convincingly fall for his weirdness. The film producers were clearly banking on Fallon’s charming personality coming through the screen - the one that shines so brightly on late night tv - but it just didn’t quite work for his film career.

Look how thick that 2004 Mac laptop is! And how is she getting any work done without wifi?!

The actors’ mountain to climb was made further daunting by the presence of a flawed script. One of the most important components of any rom com is the meet cute sequence at the beginning of the film - two strangers meet in a quirky circumstance that at once displays their incredible chemistry, but also sets up some sort of challenge to their eventual union. The meet cute in Fever Pitch is rushed, extreme, and not very cute (involving vomit and unearned intimate trust from Meeks in this stranger she has just met). From this initial rushed sequence, the film’s script thrusts the viewer straight into their relationship, not even giving the audience time to form any type of connection with the characters before expecting us to be all in on this “charming and quirky” couple. As Wrightman’s deep and lasting relationship with the Red Sox exemplifies, it takes more than a compressed scene or two to root for the home team…either that or the actors weren’t up to the task of quickly making an impassioned impression on the viewer. On a side note, the film presses pretty hard into their class differences, but it should be stated that Fallon’s character has first level season tickets on a school teacher’s salary, which would be incredibly expensive; in fact he tries to sell them in the climactic arc of the film for $125,000, which only points to flawed logic attempting to create false tension. The film is adapted from English writer Nick Hornby’s 1992 book of the same name, as well as a 1997 film starring Colin Firth (one must assume that Mr. Darcy displays more charm than Fallon in the source material), but the “pitch” referenced to in the title is not a baseball flung to a batter; rather, it refers to the playing field upon which soccer is played. One wonders if the adjustment of sport and country wrecked the story’s translation to American audiences. 

Despite the challenges of the main narrative, the final sequence (slightly) elevates the film, giving it a shot that the movie could remain a footnote in film history instead of merely fading into unknown obscurity. In an incredible stroke of luck, the timing of the film’s production schedule and narrative content matched the historic rise of the 2004 Boston Red Sox team who were fighting for a chance to win the World Series. The original script had the team losing at the end, but the baseball gods were not about to let the magical Hollywood ending down. Barrymore, Fallon, and a slim camera crew were able to get into the stadium during the final game and rushed the field when the team ultimately won. Although the footage does feel a bit tacked on to the end of the story, it is riveting filmmaking that conveys the specialness of the moment they captured. If only the entire movie leading up had earned these final glorious moments. 

Overall, the film is a bit of a mess, but deserves note because of the electric ending. Barrymore demonstrates her years of professionalism, especially when set opposite of a neophyte who eventually moved his career in a different direction. The script could have used a few more edits to smooth out the meet cute and punched up the language, making one wonder how this compares to its source material. Ultimately, the film cautions against throwing all of your passion into just one thing, reminding us all to find a balanced life, but also that it is better when your team wins the World Series.