Fever Pitch

Starring Drew Barrymore and Jimmy Fallon
Directed by: The Farrelly Brothers
Based onNick Hornsby's autobiography

Bluntly speaking? Fever Pitch is a pitch perfect grand slam romantic home run - with hilarious innings and outs…Okay, I will stop with the dreaded baseball puns - but know I could very well go on for hours. Leads, Drew Barrymore and Jimmy Fallon, have a wonderful fun-to-watch chemistry, that combined with a genuinely funny script help Fever hit it out of the ball park...

Story goes…Ben Wrightman (Jimmy Fallon) is a "smart-kids" schoolteacher. He brings them on a field trip where the little future Mensa Group gaggle get to visit a high-powered corporate office environment, and peek into their triple-digit futures among the mentally elite.

The class is to spend the day with Lindsey Meeks (Drew Barrymore). Lin is their ghost-of-christmas future. She's a powerful - lost in her work - sort, that could use some saving.

Somehow, Ben gets up the nerve to ask her out, and viola we begin a new romance.

Of course, she met Ben in the fall - aka post baseball season - so everything is hunky-dory. But Ben the School Teacher has a secret. He's a Red Sox fan…and not just the occasional game peruser that peeks over a shoulder to see yesterday's game results on a stranger's newspaper. No. He's real deal; that face painted, foam finger waving, screamin' till-they're blue at the umpire, guy-who-can pronounce and spell Yastrzemski psychotic-style fan. Oh, and his man-boy apartment is done in early Fenway gift shoppe couture.

Lindsey actually finds it all sweet and goes along with his idiosyncrasies. After all, she's no wallflower. Though, she met Ben after his boys of summer had headed south for r-&-r, she figures - dare I type it - "how bad could it be?" when the season starts up again. She thinks while he's drenched in Fenway Franks and Beers, she can concentrate on her own addiction; moving up in her career. It's a win-win.

Um, well....yeah. Intentions aside the couple starts to feel the strain of obsessions outside their own egos, and we slide into act three.

The story is really nothing new - aside the fact that its ending was changed to include the actual winning of the World Series by the Red Sox (- in like a hundred years breaking the infamous "Curse of the Bambino"), and the wonderful dialog (Lowell Ganz & Babaloo Mandel) as directed by the Farrelly brothers, Peter and Bobby - remember these out-there-on-the-edge-of-the-galaxy-hitchhiking styled directoring brothers can even make a schizophrenic state trooper seem hilarious, as opposed to a thing to fear and flee from. So sport fanatic fodder…. that's a cinch.

Jimmy Fallon is edible. I mean like incredible slow cooked Boston Baked beans with just the right addition of a sweet molasses - and of course without the gas factor. There's none of his signature SNL speedslap-inducing smirking. Jim's actually a wonderful comic leading man here... watch out Mr. Sandler, Jimmy's come a knockin'

Speaking of knocking…. Drew Barrymore, who also produced here, is back to her old talented self as the realistic Lindsey. Bravo. She's also just adorable - while still being a complete powerhouse chickbabe!.

And Bostonian's will giggle with inner-joke glee as Lenny Clarke (the Jay Leno of late night Boston-style circa 1980's) shows as Ben's quintessential Bostonian Uncle.

Fever Pitch is often hilarious, refreshingly written (the women are smart, the men are not all pigs), and always a proper romantic waltz. Enjoy.

Snack recommendation: What are ya kiddin' me here? Fenways (or Ballbark) Franks and Beers from the local packy - none of the Kirin stufamagal either yous.