I don\u2019t always trust people to do the right thing. If people could make the right decisions, we wouldn\u2019t know about Ty Pennington, Britney Spears or Fitness Made Simple\u201d by John Basedow. I feel a heavy burden because this is one of those times where I know people won\u2019t do the right thing. I can already see the evidence.<\/p>\n
\u201cFever Pitch\u201d will be a huge hit at the box office. We can\u2019t let that happen.
\nForget the fact that the movie focuses on the Boston Red Sox. Forget the presence of Jimmy Fallon, who is desperately trying to be Adam Sandler. Forget the fact that the movie focuses on the Boston Red Sox.<\/p>\n
We all should be offended as moviegoers by the shameless way that Peter and Bobby Farrelly mailed this one in.<\/p>\n
This is actually the second movie called \u201cFever Pitch.\u201d The first was a British version where the obsessive main character was a soccer fan.<\/p>\n
Both of these movies are \u2013 and I use the following phrase as loosely as possible \u2013 based on the memoir of the same name by Nick Hornby.<\/p>\n
This isn\u2019t me as a soccer fan getting up in arms because they adapted Hornby\u2019s book to fit an American audience, substituting baseball for soccer.<\/p>\n
This is me getting up in arms because the Farrelly brothers took Hornby\u2019s title and the premise of an obsessed sports fan and made their own movie out of it.<\/p>\n
Listen, if you\u2019re going to do nothing other than steal the premise, at least come up with your own title. I generally condone all laziness, but that\u2019s going too far.<\/p>\n
The movie doesn\u2019t look that bad, considering it focuses on the Boston Red Sox. But I read \u201cFever Pitch\u201d every spring before soccer season starts and I can\u2019t reconcile the book and this new movie.<\/p>\n
The book takes a serious look at growing up in a broken home, how to handle depression and the socioeconomic conditions that led to such horrible violence in English soccer stadiums in the 1970s and 1980s.<\/p>\n
The thought-provoking story of Hornby\u2019s life just doesn\u2019t reconcile with Fallon covering his ears and making noise in a restaurant because he doesn\u2019t want to hear the result of a game he is taping to watch later.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t want to give the impression that the book is a horrible downer. Hornby\u2019s obsession with the London-based Arsenal is mixed with hilarious scenes of him browbeating a teenage student with trivia questions because the youngster acts like he knows more about the team than his teacher.<\/p>\n
But this is a real life exposed. The stories in \u201cFever Pitch\u201d are the events that formed the psyche of one of the best authors alive today.<\/p>\n
That should count for something. Hornby didn\u2019t object to the use of the title, but the Farrelly brothers should have had the common courtesy to come up with their own title, their own idea.<\/p>\n
At the very least, they could have focused the story on someone other than the Boston Red Sox and kept Jimmy Fallon off the screen.<\/p>\n
I expect too much, huh?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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