Should Fever Pitch be your call to the bullpen for valentines day?

Fever pitch is a 2005 movie starring Jimmy Fallon and Drew Barrymore. Ratings on this movie are somewhat average, but is there something about this movie that critics are missing?

Plot

Ben Wrightman (played by Jimmy Fallon) went to his first Red Sox game at 7 years old. His uncle Carl took him to the game to help him forget about his parents divorce. He quickly fell in love with baseball and the Red Sox. The movie skips to 23 years later where Wrightman is a school teacher but is still a Red Sox super-fan. All of his possessions are Red Sox related. He meets Lindsey Meeks (Drew Barrymore) on a school field trip. After two attempts Meek’s agrees to be Wrightman’s girlfriend. Their relationship goes great until opening day.

When opening day comes and Wrightman asks Meeks to go with her. However, She knows very little about baseball. As she goes to more games she learns stuff, including the curse of the “Bambino”. She stops going to games after she gets hit with a foul ball. Meeks gets to go to Paris, but Wrightman doesn’t want to go because of the Red Sox. She threatens to leave him over his “childish” obsession. He tries to prove her wrong by attending a birthday party, but he gets mad after finding out he missed a comeback from a 7 run deficit. She realizes he cares more about the Red Sox than he’ll ever care about her and she leaves him.

To prove his love for her, Wrightman sells his season tickets. Meeks gets wind of this and quickly rushes to Fenway Park to stop him. She runs across to field just to get to him quicker. Meeks rips up the deal, telling him if he loves her enough to sell the tickets she loves him enough to stop him. They are reunited and kiss with the entire crowd watching them. They watch the rest of the playoffs together, where they see the “curse of the Bambino” broken when the Red Sox won the world series in game 4 against the Cardinals.

Review

What makes this movie great is the two main character’s relationship. You can feel their happiness, their sadness and all of their other emotions. The problem with a lot of love movies is that they are phony, you can see right through the character’s relationship. If the relationship doesn’t feel real it will ruin the movie. Credit goes to Jimmy Fallon and Drew Barrymore for their acting. The directors Peter and Bobby Farrelly also deserve credit for making sure they don’t have too many corny and phony lines.

One major problem with the movie is we really know very little about Lindsey Meeks, the love interest. Her relationship with Wrightman feels real but sometimes she feels one dimensional. All we really get to know about her is she is a beautiful, successful businesswoman. Her character is not really built on too much. Barrymore does a good job acting to work through this problem but it’s still noticeable. The blame falls on the director for not building on an important character. I can’t even call this a nitpick either this is a serious problem with the movie.

Despite this movies major flaw it’s still a good, not great movie. It’s a new twist on the romance movie idea. Jimmy Fallon and the rest of the actors do a great job with their roles. Both baseball fans and romance movie fans should be able to enjoy this movie.

This is 100 percent a movie I’d watch on Valentines day, if you are looking for a good romance movie.