Fever Pitch (1997)

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

Plot is quite good, performances are excellent, even the writing is good. A quick plot summary:1) Boy loves Arsenal 2) Boy meets girl and they hate each other 3) They end up falling in love and accidentally getting pregnant 4) Boy's love of football drives them apart. Girl keeps wanting him to live in the real world. 5) Boy makes pretty solid arguments about how the real world is not really all that interesting and it's good to have something outside of yourself to be emotionally attached to. 6) Arsenal wins the league and the both realize they were equally sort of wrong. 7) Happily ever after.This is a delightful film, and you will enjoy it. Especially if you are a Firth fan. He has delightfully moppy hair and his character is frustratingly endearing. There is very little to say on the positive side as it is all just...really nice! Funny, heartwarming, great pacing, just lovely. Stop reading this review and go and watch it.For the downside, there is really only one: the resolution. In classic, rom-com style, after having a row, she (though it's usually the guy) has a change of heart and seeks him out. She runs to his house in the final minutes of the game, and he tells her to...well...get lost but uses much stronger language. This moment relies on you knowing that most British apartments (at least in the late 80s) didn't have a way for you to buzz people in from inside your home. He realizes it was her and runs down to get her (even though the game is still on!) and she has wandered off. He runs back upstairs to catch the winning goal, and they meet up/make up/make out during the victory celebration in the streets. That all sounds lovely, but for me, it fell a bit flat. First, I felt her wandering away was strange. I don't think the movie was materially improved by delaying their reunion until the party. I suppose it gives a bit of a reason to show the celebration, but it felt strange. The time it took him to run downstairs, after swearing at her, was hardly enough time for her to wander far enough that he couldn't see her. Second, the issues in their relationship remain unresolved. There is a bit of a throwaway where he says, "Their failures are not my failures any more" or something like that. Essentially, his life/happiness is less connected to Arsenal's success. So, the movie wants you to think that they met in the middle: he changed a little and so did she (evidenced by their cute bickering as the movie closes). However, it's a trick. He gives up something deeply meaningful to him and becomes less connected to football and his fellow fans. She likes football a little more. That's it. She doesn't think the "real world" is any less real. She learns no lessons about the beauty of loving something you have no control over. That's her whole character: preparing, lesson plans, organization. It's all about control. She doesn't give that up or even question it. You could argue that she feels it a little in the street celebration, but that's unconvincing to me. I've been in those celebrations, and they're fun even if you don't care a whit for the team or even the sport. All it would have taken would have been a single line suggesting that she might be rethinking her priorities. But no, the conclusion is that sports are still juvenile and silly, and we should all really focus on more important things and not be so affected by them.In conclusion, I liked it, but for my personal tastes (as a lover of sport), the resolution could have been more satisfying.

A London football-obsessed school teacher has spent the last 20-some years, and every day going forward, viewing life through the one lens: his favorite team, The Arsenal Football Club. Having sublimated the grief of his parents' divorce through English Football, he views every week of his life as another football match in pursuit of fortunes always hiding.Colin Firth, who usually plays the archetypical sullen Brit, is resounding as author Nick Hornby's autobiographical noncommittal single man who's really just a lad grown up. Hornby's character then grows smitten a prim and proper English teacher who dislikes him at first but warms up to him and his enthusiasm for sport and life in general.Fever Pitch is a nice portrayal of the struggles of an irrational sports lover reluctantly coming to terms with the fact that, to the rest of the world, there are more important things than Saturday's game.written by Andy Frye, MySportsComplex.blogspot.com

Teacher Paul Ashworth (Firth) has always been an avid Arsenal football club supporter and when he starts dating a fellow teacher his love for the sport clouds his other purposes in life.The first thing that will strike you about Fever Pitch is that it has the most boring opening to a film in all of time. The second thing you will see is the appreciation the film has of all emotions relating to the beautiful game and how it affects beliefs, life and so forth.Being a fan of British cinema I let the sleepy beginning slide and sat back to watch the film grow into this intriguing reflection on the football side of life and how Colin Firth brandished out on his typecast lover's role for once and created a remarkable shot at a man lost in a world of sport.Bridget Jones, Pride and Prejudice, Mamma Mia and Love Actually. The common factor is? You're right, they're all awful. But they are all also romantic comedies and star Mr Firth as a brandished eye candy for the female viewers. I've never personally been his biggest fan, and like Hugh Grant in About a Boy, it is good to see him brandish away from the Prince Charming perception and dive more into drama. This hard nosed football fanatic is a glorious exploration of obsession with no way of real world understanding and having seen many of his films, he to me has never bettered this. But with A Single Man due next year critics are suggesting it's his time for an Oscar.Sadly we can never fully escape his typecast and we see a love interest inserted to balance out the good and bad of his football obsession. This is almost as ridiculous as Love Actually, there was a brief laugh and then they're snogging, having argued previously in the week. Her jealousy and animosity completely contradicts what is to follow it and Ruth Gemmell in all honesty, brings little but negative vibes to the film.As a fan of football I found the representation quite an accurate depiction of the way the football world used to be and how we as neutrals watched with eager anticipation to see our favourite players march onto the field to the cheers and plaudits of the crowd. Now in a world where we see players selling perfume with their wives (Beckham) and more stories off field than on (manager sackings etc) it has been quite a while since the game has really been viewed as a game of sport and not of tabloid tales. This film however looks beyond the press and sees it as purely a fan's perspective, which benefits it.The scene in the stadium that introduces Ruth Gemmell to the game is a great collaboration of fan's passion and youthful exuberance.The final game we see is a title decider and whether you support Arsenal or not you will be gripped with the fans on screen to see the outcome. Despite major flaws with flashbacks, narration and love interests David Evans has created a good intended drama that is a good reflection of fans emotions to the game.

I am a middle-aged American woman who has never seen a soccer game and has never seen any kind of live sports game all the way through beyond Little League (3 brothers, 1 son). I live in a town where football is the main local religion. Nick Hornby's novel was a delight to read and really gave me some sense of the psychology as well as the anthropology of being a fan. I rented the movie because I wanted to SEE the novel: the stadium, the terraces, the colors, the craziness Hornby describes. Youtube and Wikipedia could tell me some about Alan Smith, Highbury, the Hillsborough tragedy, but not enough. The movie came through. Actual footage of games and scenes inside the stadium gave a powerful sense of what it's all about. The final sequence, in which various characters Paul's fandom has touched watch a championship game, was wonderfully moving. The plot has three characters--Paul the young fan, Paul the adult fan, and Sarah the outsider who is repelled by the irrationality, the loud and sweary masculinity of it all. The plot exists to allow Paul to expose, stubbornly as a child and articulately as an adult, what it means to be a fan. Sarah is there to force him into talking and thinking a bit about it. Both Pauls are marvelous. Colin Firth is amazing. His physical attractiveness is essential to the plot--it gets him into Sarah's bed so they can start talking about Arsenal-- and that simple fact leaves him huge amounts of room to be boyish, goofy, moody, clueless, innocent, and cruel.