Fever Pitch: Yay or Gay?

I will admit to being surprised by the negative reaction to my declaration of Fever Pitch as my 5th favorite baseball movie.
I knew nobody liked Jimmy Fallon (I don't either), but, like I said, after putting my dislike for Fallon aside, I liked it. Roger Ebert gave it 3 1/2 stars out of 4, for what that's worth (he also loved Field of Dreams and The Sandlot, and he hated The Natural, so I get the sense he has a handle on baseball movies).
But the number of negative responses, many from people whose opinion I respect (not you Rex), got me thinking.
Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I was blinded by the fact that Fever Pitch was on HBO like every day right before I left on my baseball-themed honeymoon with my wife.
So I popped it in the DVD player this weekend to watch it again, with a critical eye.

Here's the new verdict:
There are some things that are, yeah, pretty gay. Hammy dialog, over the top annoying-ness from Fallon, plot contrivances and whatnot.
Early on in fact, I felt this sinking feeling - Oh, shit, they're right. This is gay.
But eventually the things I liked about it before re-emerged.
Namely, two characters that I could relate to and liked, which probably goes to show just what a great writer Nick Hornby is, since the characters are played by Fallon and Drew Barrymore.

It's a romantic comedy, and if that alone is your reason for hating it, well, check your phony masculinity at the door, Rambo. I'm not impressed. But I'll admit, Fever Pitch works better as a romantic comedy than as a baseball movie (some have said the same thing about Bull Durham, though I wouldn't).

Thing is, there was still a lot of stuff I liked.
I liked the parts where he's teaching the basics of the game to his clueless girlfriend, something we've all done at some point.
I liked how his apartment was like a Sox gift shop. The worst part of being married is that my bitchy wife won't let me do the same thing to our house. I related to that quite strongly.
I liked that the first gift he buys his girlfriend is a Sox warm-up jacket. I also have a habit of buying gifts for women that would be better suited for me. That way if you break up or she doesn't like it - you can keep it!
I liked the part where he gets his season tickets in the mail, and pulls them out of the box in big sheets and smells them. How cool would that be?
I like that he forces his friends to enter a draft to accompany him to games. That seemed sensible to me.
I think a lesser movie would've tried to make Fallon (and, ergo, all die-hard baseball fans) look idiotic, or selfish. But this movie understands and even sympathizes with the guy. It basically says, yeah, this guys' a little weird but there's nothing wrong with that. Sometimes I need that reassurance.
I like that Drew Barrymore doesn't know anything about baseball but tries really hard to learn. A bad movie would've made her uber-bitchy or inserted some lame contrived excuse for her to hate baseball (her dad was killed by a Louisville slugger, or something). But written the way she was, she basically reminded me of every girlfriend and pseudo-girlfriend I've ever had, except my wife.
I like the way the movie takes place over the course of the season, and their relationship mirrors the success of the Red Sox. My mood in the summer often depends on how the Twins are doing, so, again, that made sense.
I liked the scenes in the ballpark. They made me want to be at a game. They make me want to go to Fenway Park. You might think that's a given, that any movie can do that simply by bringing a camera into the ballpark, but Rookie of the Year was filmed at Wrigley Field, and it pretty much made me want to stay as far away from Wrigley Field as possible.
I liked Drew Barrymore's big sister a lot. She's shit-hot. She looks like she could be an American Gladiator. Damn. I even thought it was funny when the fat friend called the gym instructor a Nazi bitch.
The ending is completely outrageous and unbelievable, I'll admit it, but hey, it's a movie. Not a documentary about Red Sox fans (which would be even lamer than it sounds, I'm sure).

I had a conversation once with a serious girlfriend in which I admitted to her that I would never be able to love her as much as I love baseball. I knew that it was the wrong thing to say, but I wanted to be honest. She didn't react as badly as you might think, but, needless to say, we are no longer together. I've never said the same thing to my wife, but I think she's aware of the possibility. I thought of that in the scene where they're fighting and Fallon says, "Name one thing in your life you cared about 23 years ago that you still do! 10 years! 5!"
Further evidence, of course, that men are better than women.

In hindsight, Fever Pitch is not better than the vastly overrated but still good Bull Durham. So I'd probably switch those two on my list. But otherwise, I'm sticking by it.
And you can all kiss my gay ass.