Fever Pitch

Eight years after the successful British adaptation of Hornby’s novel comes a remake from the Farrelly brothers. I can understand that the setting moved from soccer to baseball. But not that all the magic, the hyperbole, the truthfulness and the well-aimed humor disappeared. In the first movie there is the original “sports reporter" narration and a likeable hero. Instead, here we get the classic American romantic comedy template “enriched" by one lame attempt at humor after another. But the worst thing is how the screenwriter wrote the main protagonist. Instead of a likeable teacher and his weakness for soccer, we get a regular pathetic maniac who you wouldn’t leave alone in a room full of kids. Instead of sympathy he inspires the exact opposite. Fever Pitch would be unbearable hell even without being in the shadow of the excellent original, but in it this movie is indescribably bad and, primarily, totally pointless. (11/27/2007)