Hey folks, Harry here - this fella gets bonus feathers for calling himself Woody Wilkins, and anyone that knows that name is someone that knows comedy in its myriad of forms, so he must not be joshing. Truth be told, I know this maniac and he definitely knows his banana peels from his creme pies from his dirty sanchezes... unless you pump Woody here with tequela, in which case he'll fine dine on the first and the third and lube with the middle. Anyways - seems there's a pair of edits of the Farrelly's latest film. Haven't been a huge fan of their last 3, in fact... I'd go so far as to say I hated them, but after reading Moriarty's review and Woody's... it seems there's an exceptionally funny film... and a half assed piece of shit that might pass for comedy in a cancer ward, but in the real world it's a tad of a yawn. Actually... they never get that harsh, but toning down the Farrellys... what's the fucking point of that? I mean - they're wonderfully filthy fucks and that's what we want from them. Hard R! Here's Woody...

  Two weeks ago, I saw an early cut of the Farrelly Brother's new movie "Fever Pitch."  Based on a Nick Hornby novel, it's a romantic comedy about a fanatical Red Sox fan who falls in love with a girl and how he deals with both passions.  I thought the film was okay, the main problem being some iffy chemistry between leads Jimmy Fallon and Drew Barrymore.  Christ, Jimmy Fallon, right?  Mr. Mumbles from Saturday Night Live, the guy who comes across as a watered down Adam Sandler -- hell, the guy whose best impersonation on SNL was of Adam Sandler.  And Barrymore... am I really ever going to love a Drew Barrymore movie?  Romantic comedies live and die on the chemistry of their leads, and though Fallon and Barrymore got better as the movie progressed, they seemed off from the start.   

I wanted to like the movie more.  I used to work with the Farrellys, and I root for them to succeed not just because they're tremendously great people but because they're so goddamned talented.  It's so easy to be a cynic out here, to let that Los Angeles fog roll over you, to expect every movie that comes out of a studio to be a watered down piece of garbage, to expect every comedy to have its balls cut off by pointless rewrites and uncertain or unwise executives.  That way of thinking exits for a reason; because a lot of the time, it's fucking true.  But sometimes things poke through the fog.  So when I got invited to go see the new cut of "Fever Pitch" last night, you're goddamn right I was hopeful.  I don't want to be a cynic just yet; I want to believe that some filmmakers can take their movie, test it, tweak it, and make it really good.    

Well, they didn't make it really good. They made it great.  This is, hands down, the best thing they've done since "There's Something About Mary."  Call me a plant, think ill thoughts of me and my family -- y'all can eat it.  Eat big old chunks of it.  Because if the version of the film I saw tonight is the one that's in theaters in two months, critics and audiences will bear me out.  I'm pretty sure Drew was as drunkenly happy with the film as I was, so if we're both on the take, well, fantastic, where's my Sharper Image gift certificate?  And if there's no gift certificate coming, I want a massage chair.  And if no massage chair, an air filter.     

How they fixed the movie is better left unsaid; no one aside from the filmmakers are going to know what the hell I'm talking about anyway.  Very simply, though, by cutting down on some scenes early on, the Fallon/Barrymore relationship now feels really natural.  The whole movie is based around a relationship rather than a crazy device (i.e. he slipped in a bathtub and now he can read chicks' minds zoinks!!!!), and as such it feels right that there's a little awkwardness between Ben (Jimmy Fallon) and Lindsay (Drew Barrymore) early on. Before that awkwardness was overplayed and it colored the rest of the movie in a negative light, but now it's just right. Chances are if you're reading this, that's what it was like between you and your girl too, right?  Kind of awkward and stilted at first, right?  Mine sure as hell was.  Who the fuck acts like Will Smith when they first meet a girl?   

The movie opens with a brief scene showing Ben as a little kid that explains how he became a Red Sox fan.  It's the kind of sort setup the Farrellys have done before (specifically with "Shallow Hal") but here they nail it.  From the impossibly cute little Ben to the crazed aunt to what's maybe the single best dramatic line reading Lenny Clarke has ever done, it's a deceivingly simple opening but one that completely encompasses how well the Farrellys have fine tuned their silly-mixed-with-sweet sensibilities to this material.  It's all a balancing act; for instance, without the aforementioned goofiness of the crazed aunt, there's a chance things get maudlin.  Without Clarke's simple, yet perfect statement to young Ben of "they'll break your heart, kid" the opening carries no real weight.  Getting these kinds of setups right isn't easy and this one is perfect for the material -- Moriarty even leaned over to me after it and said, "wow, that was pretty nice."   

When we flash forward to last year (this takes place during the 2004-2005 Red Sox season, remember), Lindsay is a systems analyst married to her job and Ben is a teacher... but also an absolute Red Sox fanatic.  It's a great credit to the script by Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel that there's no mad rush to reveal Ben's fanaticism to the audience.  Instead, the first fifteen or twenty minutes is all about Ben and Lindsay falling for each other.  And it works in the cut I saw.  It works really, really well.  I was no Jimmy Fallon fan before, but the Farrellys coaxed a really good, natural performance out of him.  He's charming and kind of dorky and doesn't seem too crazed... until Red Sox season starts up.  And that's when the movie absolutely takes off.   

Once the baseball season starts up Ben basically comes out of hibernation and Fallon's performance becomes a whole lot more engaging.  I just typed "Fallon's performance becomes a whole lot more engaging," and my computer didn't blow up, so there must be an ounce of truth here.  Honestly -- the rest of the movie works as well as it does because Ben is a guy fueled by something very real.  It's not a Hollywood contrivance.  People really do live and die for the Sox, and knowing that infuses the movie with a sense of honesty that's missing from so many other romantic comedies.  Replace "Red Sox" with any other passion -- other teams, movies, music, books -- and you understand how universal the message is.  When we're passionate about things, we men can be absolute out our mind fools.   

In fact, the reveal of how insane a Red Sox fan Ben is one of the funniest scenes in the movie.  Ben is in Florida, watching the Red Sox in Spring Training, and as the ESPN cameras roll Ben freaks out about his love for the Sox.  The initial sense that Fallon was going to mumble his way through the movie is shot out of the water at this point; here Ben is a raving lunatic, screaming about how the Sox are more important than sex or breathing.  Lindsay and her father are watching all of this on TV, and when her dad calls Ben an asshole it's a great moment; here's the man she's falling in love with, and she's just seen who he really is.  And her dad called him on it exactly.  Little touches like this are what set the film apart -- you can soft-pedal and play it safe and do "Little Black Book" or you can go a little harsher, a little more real, and because of it the story has that much more emotional impact.   

Once the regular season starts Ben takes Lindsay to as many home games as he can, introducing her to his Fenway family and bringing her into his world.  The supporting cast here is strong -- both the Fenway family and Ben's group of fanatical Red Sox fans.  As the rest of the movie plays out and Ben and Lindsay get more and more serious, Ben's love for the Sox starts to really threaten their relationship.  I usually can't stand Barrymore, but there are a few scenes here where I actually saw that  "adorableness" I always heard about but could never understand.  Seeing her in the stands, wearing a tight Red Sox shirt, watching the game with Ben, bouncing around as the stadium sings "Sweet Caroline" -- mind you, I usually fucking detest moments like this.  But it works here because everything has been played so real.  Or maybe I was just in love with seeing all the footage from Boston and Fenway and Sox games, because this movie plays like a Beantowner's fetish dream.  

Again and again while you watch "Fever Pitch" you're reminded how much the Farrellys have matured as filmmakers -- and not in the no-fun, "I'm Val Kilmer and I'll never make a movie like 'Top Secret' again 'cause I'm big fat douchebag" sense.  They still know how to tell a dick joke.  It's just that they realized that for this material, your dick joke better be damn well placed.   

Case in point -- there's a scene midway through the film that takes place at a "Great Gatsby" style birthday party.  You get three minutes of Jimmy Fallon and Drew Barrymore dancing to 80s tunes, the kind of shit that makes any sane male put a gun to his head.  But what balances it out is a very, very funny scene right at the head of the party where a husband drunkenly recites a poem to his wife, saying something to the effect of how he likes to look at her in the mirror in a certain sexual position.  It's such a well played scene; the guy's not a drunken, stammering idiot -- just gleefully, glowingly drunk and happy.  And when he gets to the punchline, it's so unforced that it's natural, and funny, and the kind of thing that reminds the audience, hey, don't worry, we're not going to treat you like 10 year olds, we know these are adults and adults do stupid things.  Smart little choices like that are peppered through out the film.  And the inclusion of the Red Sox real story -- hell, the fact that the Red Sox actually won the fucking World Series last year -- has to the be the most fortuitous meeting of movie and real life events in the history of man.  The Red Sox win works beautifully into the movie; since it really happened, the film can indulge all the cheesy, crazy, "only in Hollywood can this happen" wrap-up it wants, because it's all real.  

I'm sure there's going to be some tinkering before this thing gets released, which is fine because there are a few problems.  There's a scene in Lindsay's spinning class early on -- specifically the second part of the spinning class scene -- that's pointless and slows the movie down.  The next Lindsay scene, at a rock climbing wall, contains the single longest setup to a joke I've ever seen (girl is climbing the wall, girl is gonna fall, the audience knows this and is waiting for it... the scene is only is gonna work if it goes on so long the audience goes naw, maybe she won't fall... and then she does).  And about mid-way through the film there's one of those "hey, this hot guy might challenge our romantic lead later in the movie" scenes between Lindsay and a Patrick Swayze looking dude.  It's one of those pointless possible romantic jeopardy moves that only makes the dopiest viewer pause for thought. "Hey... I wonder if Lindsey is gonna end up with this Patrick Swayze looking dude."  No, stupid, she's not.  Now get back to work Abercrombie.   

I always knew the Farrellys were die-hard Red Sox fans, and there's no doubt this film's from the heart.  What I didn't know is that the Farrellys were capable of making a romance that was this charming and honest but that didn't at all feel like a corruption of who they were.  The movie I saw last night is the guys at their best.  Jimmy Fallon, Drew Barrymore... I can't believe I'm typing it with those leads, but fuck it: "Fever Pitch" is a great little film.

Woody Wilkins