Sometimes, it's a blessing that Netflix delights in sending me defective DVD's.Last night, I sat down to watch Fever Pitch. The American version about the Red Sox. Can we just rename the movie, "Every Annoying and Oppressive Gender Stereotype, Ever?"
See, Lindsay (Drew Barrymore) is around 30 and single. Which, in this film, means she's chomping at the bit to settle down. Especially because she's the last single person in her group. In rapid order, we learn that she's single for the same reasons all movie women are single: she's too into her career, her success scares men off, her girlfriends aid her in overanalyzing every relationship, and, oh, she's too picky.
In fact, there's a whole scene where it takes hours and several trendy workouts for her friends to alternately convince her to go on a first date, or cancel, with the Jimmy Fallon character.
Could we, just once, have a movie where the woman is single because she just hasn't found the right guy yet? Or because she's focusing on other things, or, even more radically, just prefers to be alone?
Enter Jimmy Fallon, playing Jimmy Fallon. I'm sure his character has a name, I just don't remember it. So Jimmy is this goofy schoolteacher, and romance blossoms amid all the vomit (really...there's a food poisoning vomit sequence).
He goes to meet her friends. The girlfriends are all astonished that he's "still single" (at 30ish! Horrors!) and hadn't been "tagged and bagged." So they all begin to speculate on what is wrong with him. (Maybe he just hasn't met the right person?) All this movie needed was a woman saying, "All the good ones are either taken or gay."
At this point, I may have started yelling at my television.
As it turns out, he's a nerdy sports fan. And sort of immature, and he dresses like a "man-boy." Because what this movie really needed to do is remind us that all men are immature twits until some woman comes along and makes them over and forces them to grow up. And then they don't have any fun anymore, because women are harpies who press a man to commit, then suck all the joy out of his life.
Anyways, there was something about a pregnancy scare and a trip to Paris. Right then, in my Kevorkian cinematic moment, the DVD died.
So I tried to imagine the rest of the movie. In my version, Lindsay realizes she could just go to occasional games, and let Jimmy nerd out all he wants because that gives her more time to hang out with her friends. And she figures out that it's OK for a guy to dress a little schlubby, if he's nice to you and makes you laugh. And Jimmy undergoes a neurological testing, and realizes he has some sort of curable disorder that makes him all schticky and annoying. And he gets cured, and her girlfriends stop being total pills, then they all live happily ever after.
In the comments, be a script doctor for Fever Pitch.
6 comments:
Lindsay and Jimmy decide to go out to a bar on their next date, a neat little pub in Cambridge. Jimmy starts showing off his knowledge of Red Sox stats, like batting averages and home run records, and a young scruffy but good looking janitor with a good heart but emotional problems who also happens to be an undiscovered math genius starts showing him up with his superior knowledge of Red Sox stats. This young janitor and his townie friends then get Lindsay's number, and ask Jimmy if he likes apples. Jimmy says no, he's more of a banana man, then the janitor-guy yells "well I got her number! How you like THEM apples, or bananas, or whatever!" The rest of the movie gets overly muadlin and preachy and features a bearded Robin Williams who hasn't done anything good since Good Morning Vietnam.
1) Drew realizes she's dating Jimmy Fallon. She realizes that if they get married she'll be raising a child even before she gets pregnant. She dumps him for a guy twice her age who is already married with three kids since he's a much better catch.
2) The movie takes a dark turn when she's repainting his living room. The ladder tips over and pokes a hole in the wall revealing the first of Jimmy's last 38 girlfriends. Rather than call the cops she hides in his basement while he thumps around upstairs calling her name.
3) Jimmy sleeps with Drew's friends. When she gets mad he leaves and hooks up with some 19 year old vacuous blonde with obvious implants. The happy ending comes when Jimmy goes to prison after it turns out she was really 16.
Don't want to ruin the ending for you, but the Sox end up winning the World Series. Actually, aside from that, the ending is even more annoying than you imagined.
I've seen this movie. It's beyond medical intervention.
"women are harpies who press a man to commit, then suck all the joy out of his life."
...in the best possible way, of course.
Thank you so much for reminding me of why I never, ever watch romantic comedies!
As long as you're making up the ending, can you also have the Red Sox lose the World Series, sending Boston into a spiral of depression it has yet to emerge from?
Actually, I quite liked Fever Pitch, which is made all the more impressive given how much I don't like Fallon or Barrymore. But then, I can't really think of a sports-related romantic comedy I didn't like on at least some level.
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