Jimmy Fallon and Drew Barrymore in Fever Pitch Photo © Copyright 20th Century Fox

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The Sickness

You never thought you'd feel nostalgic for the hair gel joke. But here you are, so worn down by the sheer banality of the Farrellys' new movie, Fever Pitch, that you're thinking Ben Stiller's mispronunciation of Brett Favre's name might have been comic genius.

Though it's based on a Nick Hornby novel (and adapted for the screen once already, in 1997, with Colin Firth as a football [soccer] fan), Fever Pitch trots out the usual elements in the Farrelly formula -- beautiful if confused girl, earnest if demented boy, supportive if slightly oddball community. This formula has never been especially compelling, and so it is usually filled out by wild antics. Without these, the formula is what it is. This mismatched couple is comprised of workaholic Lindsey (fearless Drew Barrymore) and hardcore Red Sox fan Ben (Jimmy Fallon). He's also a math teacher, which suggests his appreciation for numbers, though the pre-2004 stats for the Sox could hardly have been pleasant to mull over. But Ben's career is only a means to have him meet Lindsey, as he brings students to see a successful math person, which is her, working in some marketing capacity. By and large, he's reduced to an assortment of Red Sox paraphernalia -- shower curtain, posters, underwear, massive wall shrine -- each item's revelation in close-up as uninspired as the one before.

While the movie's central relationship is between Ben and his team, Lindsey makes mighty efforts to accommodate his obsession, going to games (he has season tickets left him by his Uncle Carl [Lenny Clarke]), hanging with his equally fixated friends, scheduling her life around his "previous commitments" (spring training, home and away games, the Yankees and the Mariners). The mini-crisis that arises when Ben must out himself to Lindsey as a fan -- a serious fan -- occasions a briefly charming moment, as they negotiate what this will mean for their future. She, of course, has no idea what's in store, thinking he's only asking her to be un-clingy. But the movie has little to do except replay the problem: the box seat "family" is tedious, the ups and downs of winning and losing repetitive, and the conflicts between the lovers predictable.

As Lindsey comes to understand the scope of her problem -- as she puts it, she's dating two different guys, Winter Ben and Summer Ben -- Fever Pitch almost makes a point about compromise and generosity in romance. But it also poses questions to which you already know the answers: Will she put up with his zealous devotion? Will he grow up? Will Ben Affleck make his rumored cameo appearance?

Ben has no supporting-cast advisors (save for his Sox family, whose judgment is foregone). Lindsey, however, is overwhelmed by guidance, such that the movie can stretch out its running time en route to the inevitable. In between dates, she discusses her odd arrangements with her married girlfriends, Robin (irrepressible KaDee Strickland), Sarah (Marissa Jaret Winokur), and Molly (Ione Skye, who should just star in her own movie already). They huff and puff in their spin classes, climb on those indoor plastic-rock-faces, and whack at heavy bags, all suggesting they're all as driven and organized and angry as Lindsey. But they too seem baffled by the Ben dilemma, wondering if maybe she needs to let her man indulge his passion; though, to their credit, they lean toward her exit from the relationship. Even if she is approaching 30 (or as Lindsey way too cutely calls it, "20 plus 10"), she needn't settle for a partner whose intensely primary interest is a baseball team. Really. It's 2005.

Though Fever Pitch does suggest that maybe his devotion to a team (who "doesn't love him back") is a kind of addiction, and yes, so is her careerist sublimation. But this matters little when, in the grander scheme, the Sox really do achieve the most crushing comeback in playoffs history and win the Series (the screenplay was revised last October), and so Ben's mad love seems justified after all.

If the Farrellys' formula seems applicable to the most bizarre of circumstances -- Tony Robbins' voodoo, conjoined twins, bowling -- sports love seems to have it stumped. Because Ben's relationship is so barely sketched and ritualized (he's loud and goony on tv, he hugs his UPS man when he delivers each season's tickets) the film falls back on what's always winning, namely, Drew, and not only because she produced it. Her sustained energy, bright and precise, makes the film's ostensible boy story seem all too familiar and feeble.