“Fever Pitch” Hits a Homerun

By: Chelse Melina
Posted In: Entertainment

From the top row, I had a bird’s eye view of the excitement from the stadium. Red and blue baseball hats bopped up and down. Boys and girls, young and old, donned the All-American baseball outing outfit: jeans, tee-shirt and sneakers.

A group of college-aged boys, clad in baseball jerseys, paged through the freebie baseball magazine that was handed out at the ticket counter.

The unmistakable smell of popcorn filled the air and the sound of vending machine ice swimming around in massive, Big Gulp sized plastic cups rung in my ears. The ground was sticky and grimy from spilt soda and empty candy wrappers – and the main event hadn’t even started.

If I didn’t know better, I would have sworn that I was seated in Fenway Park Stadium. But I wasn’t – I was in downtown Warwick, Rhode Island, at the local stadium seating one-too-many multiplex.

And the baseball hats, tee-shirts and jerseys? One team was represented: the Red Sox. The ticket gate that handed out the freebie magazine was not the Yawkee Way entrance; rather, the box office at the movie theater.

I was at the pre-game opening (aka: the sneak preview) of “Fever Pitch,” which officially opens, nationwide, on April 8, 2005.

From beginning to end, “Fever Pitch” was a home run. It was an out of the ballpark hit. In fact, “Fever Pitch” was in a league of its own.

Drew Barrymore and Jimmy Fallon starred as the lovable, genuinely in-love couple. The couple met after Ben the schoolteacher (Fallon) took his high-school geometry class on a fieldtrip to Lindsey the successful business girl’s (Barrymore) business.

The two quickly hit it off, but quickly realize that they each have passions that might come between their relationship: Lindsey is obsessed with work and Ben lives, breathes and eats the Boston Red Sox.

Through crazy antics, tears and minor concussions, the couple learns to compromise and make sacrifices in their extra-curricular passions, work and baseball, to accommodate each other.

Barrymore and Fallon play the roles of Lindsey and Ben perfectly. Barrymore revisits her classic role of the girl-next-door, as seen in “The Wedding Singer,” “Never Been Kissed,” and “50 First Dates.” And, as expected, Fallon performs in his witty ways, yet surprises the audience with a touching soft-side.

Although avid Red Sox fans show an obvious special interest to the movie, the movie appeals to movie-goers of all sorts. The sports theme, mixed with the love theme, mixed with hilarious one-liners make for an overall great movie.