There has never been better timing for a movie like this. The romantic comedy has been a genre on the downswing recently, mostly because a unique premise for the boy-gets-girl story is becoming harder to find.
Everything seems to have been done and done again. We have seen Cinderella stories and stories about men and women overcoming all odds to be together, but what we haven't seen in a while is a romance like the one in \Fever Pitch""-one so original in its own amusing little way, with great characters and touches that seem so simple and true that you can't help but smile once it reaches its satisfying and hopelessly romantic conclusion.
A slimmer and sweet-looking Drew Barrymore plays Lindsay, a thriving businesswoman in Boston, who falls for Ben (Jimmy Fallon) the goofy, lovable school teacher. Their relationship seems perfect until springtime ensues, and then Lindsay finds herself competing with the love of Ben's life: the Boston Red Sox.
While it's clear that Lindsay is supposed to be the protagonist of this off-beat love story, the screen is almost always stolen by Jimmy Fallon's comical and incessantly attractive Ben, who, unlike many characters in modern romantic comedies (like all of Hugh Grant's, for example), is not some debonair pretty boy with good hair, and seems like a boy that a girl could actually fall in love with. He is sincere but clueless and overwhelmingly normal. He loves Lindsay, but for him the Red Sox are not just his favorite team, they are a passion with which he simply cannot part.
Ben is a simple and realistic man, and while Lindsay may seem too good to be true at times, her busy work schedule and eventual frustration with Ben's inability to commit to anything but the Red Sox raise her off the screen as an enchanting, multi-dimensional heroine, another rare feat in romantic comedies today.
The laughs come in large quantities with ""Fever Pitch,"" thanks mostly to the vulnerable humor that comes with Jimmy Fallon's character. A lot of the writing is surprisingly thoughtful for a movie about a baseball fanatic and his girlfriend. Some interesting choices are made in terms of direction, and as a result, the audience is able to grasp both Ben's wild love for Lindsay, as well as his blatant obsession with the Red Sox.
In one memorable scene while the couple are out to dinner with Lindsay's parents, we see Ben trying his hardest to be both impressive and charming. But when a man approaches the table behind him and asks another man who won the Red Sox game, Ben goes to all lengths to avoid hearing the conversation and ends up looking embarrassingly like a ten-year-old boy. He misses the game to have dinner with Lindsay, so he tapes it, and to hear the outcome before seeing it, in Ben's case, would be tragic.
""Fever Pitch"" goes above and beyond convention in the modern romantic comedy. While it still features too-good-to-be-true woman a typical man uncomfortably making mistakes pursuing her, the movie feels overwhelmingly real. The characters are so likable that you can't help but sigh whimsically in the end.
A perfect date movie for the spring and one that may induce nostalgia for the perfect summer love, ""Fever Pitch"" hits the ball right out of the park.
