Fever Pitch (2005)

With today being the official start of the MLB Baseball season for 2014, I decided to review some baseball movies.

“Bucky Friggin’ Dent!” – Ben

Number of Times Seen – between 5-10 times (24 mar 2006, DVD, Jan 2013  and 30 Mar 2014)

Brief Synopsis – A romantic love triangle between a man, a woman and his love for baseball.

My Take on it – Being a big fan of baseball, I could relate to this movie on a different level than lots of people.

Albeit that I’m not as avid a fan as Jimmy Fallon’s character Ben is, I can understand his motivation and also have known people similar to him.

What takes this movie to a higher level for me is the fact that I can really “buy” the love story between Fallon and Drew Barrymore. They have great chemistry together and I can believe that these characters can fall in love and enjoy each others company.

I think that one of the reasons I like this movie so much is the fact that I can somewhat relate to Fallon’s character’s “obsession” with a hobby of his and the feeling that most women wouldn’t understand why someone would give so much of themselves for that said hobby. As an ardent fan of movies, I have felt many times in my life that people (even those close to me) don’t…or actually can’t understand why I would let this hobby play such a prominent position in my life.

The answer is actually quite simple: because it makes me happy.

This movie is a remake of a British movie about a huge soccer (football) fan and The Farelly brothers (mostly known for screwball comedies) decided to adapt it to baseball. Their timing was amazing because during filming they needed to rewrite the script based on actual events involving The Red Sox baseball season. They even had to fly Fallon and Barrymore to attend a few key baseball games in St. Louis to help with the finale.

My favorite scene is at the end of the movie when Barrymore runs across the stadium. I cry every time I watch that scene because the lines spoken are truly emotional and epitomizes to me what true love is.

BTW, the reason I chose the Bucky Dent quote above is because as a kid, he was my favorite player. 🙂

Bottom Line – Great romantic comedy set around baseball.  Fallon and Barrymore have nice chemistry together. Highly recommended!

Rating – Oscar Worthy

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