Fever Pitch

directed by Bobby and Peter Farrelly
Category: "Sports"
Year of Release:2005
Date Added:04/11/2008
Date Watched:05/04/2005
Description:
My Rating:7

Reviews for Fever Pitch

Review - Fever Pitch

Ben takes his math students on a field trip. He falls for Lindsey, the guide, and asks her out. When he shows up for their first date, she’s sick and throws up. He puts her to bed and cleans up the mess. She fall for him and they start dating. Everything goes great until baseball season starts. It turns out he’s a fanatic Red Sox fan. Ben passes up on a visit to meet Lindsey’s parents to go to spring training. Lindsey knows little about baseball, but good-naturedly attends many of the games. Things work out for most of the season, and Ben even agrees to skip a Sox/Yankees game to attend a birthday party for one of Lindsey’s friends. But things start to crumble when Ben finds out that the Sox came back from seven runs down in the bottom of the ninth to win 8-7.

Lindsey announces that she thinks she pregnant. It’s a false alarm, but it gets her thinking. They break up, which causes Ben to realize how much he loves her. He agrees to sell his season tickets. Lindsey finds out and goes to the park. The only seat she can get is in center field. She sees Ben about to sign a contract to sell his seats, so she jumps down on the field and runs across to stop him. She says that, if he loves her enough to give up his seats, she loves him enough to let him keep them.

• From IMDB — Another game filmed for the movie was the September 16, 2004 game against the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, which Boston won 11-4. The shooting consisted of Drew Barrymore running across the field to where Jimmy Fallon was sitting, near the Red Sox dugout. This was filmed after the game, with about half the crowd staying after to be extras.

• From IMDB — The Opening Day sequence was filmed on 4 September 2004 with Stephen King throwing out the first pitch; the Red Sox lost that game, ending a ten-game winning streak and King was blamed for it in the Boston Globe.

• From IMDB — On 27 October 2004, Game 4 of the 2004 World Series between the St. Louis Cardinals and Boston Red Sox, the finale of this film was shot. After the last play of the game in the bottom of the ninth during the Red Sox celebration, stars Drew Barrymore and Jimmy Fallon were filmed also celebrating together on the field. A brief shot of the filming could be seen live on the Fox broadcast of the World Series. Rewrites by the Farrelly brothers had to be done immediately following the World Series game 7 clincher of the ALCS against the New York Yankees to include the historic 2004 Boston Red Sox postseason.

• Good line. Lindsey asks Ben how he can live without a cell phone. She says, “What if there’s an emergency? What if you dad has a heart attack?” Ben says, “My dad died two years ago.” Lindsey says, “I’m sorry.” Ben replies, “Yea. I just found out about it this morning.

It was an enjoyable movie. Ben’s character was funny. I didn’t care as much for Drew Barrymore’s acting. She seemed to smirk her way through the whole film. I can sympathize with Ben’s passion for the Red Sox, having similar passions for the Cubs (but not this year). The movie fell apart a bit at the end. They actually wrote the script to have the Sox lose again, but then when they won the World Series, they had to rewrite things. The final scene, where Lindsey jumps down onto the field at Fenway Park is ridiculous. There’s no way she would have made it, especially during the playoffs. She would have been tackled by dozens of security guards. And when she made it across, they wouldn’t have delayed the game and stood around while Lindsey and Ben worked out their issues.
Back to the list