Fever Pitch

"Fever Pitch" is supposed to be an adaptation of Nick Hornby's book "Pitch Fever". Only in the book Hornby himself is the main character. And he hasn't got an obsession with baseball, but with soccer. The rest is the same as in the movie, though. Or is it? The truth is "Fever Pitch" has almost nothing to do with the book. It has not so much been based on as it has been inspired by Hornby's novel. On its own "Fever Pitch" is a pretty romantic movie that tries to avoid going over the top with its humor most of the time. Jimmy Fallon and Drew Barrymore try their best not to be unbearable and succeed more or less. The Farrelly brothers clearly took the Weitz brothers as an example for how to get out of the dick joke business into more mature movies. Of course, "Fever Pitch" doesn't hold a candle to the wonderful "About A Boy", but you have to say that the Farrellys were given weaker material to work with in the first place. In its best moments the movie makes you chuckle and in its worst it makes you yawn and look at your watch. Yep, the big problem with "Fever Pitch" is that it drags on too long. Stripped from Hornby's hilarious observations on his favorite sport and its connections to his own life the story just isn't very interesting (which has also already been the problem with the first adaptation of the novel). What do we learn from that? Just because an author is popular doesn't mean that all his novel translate well to film. J.D. Salinger had a reason why he denied film makers to ever adapt his stories, you know?