Fever Pitch

Dir: David Evans

1997

**

I'm not a huge fan of Nick Hornby's although I haven't hated most of his adapted works. They're all a bit twee for my liking, generally the sort of British film I have absolutely no enthusiasm for. I'm not much of a football (Soccer) fan either, so I found it pretty hard to relate to the theme. I would find it hard living with someone so obsessed with football, or anything for that matter, which I had no interest in so I found watching the film a struggle. For a romance film to work I feel that the couple have also got to be somewhat endearing, likable or at the very least interesting, but Colin Firth's Paul and Ruth Gemmell's Sarah are neither. In the real world their relationship wouldn't work and they would move on, unless of course there was genuine love there, but in Fever Pitch there is no trace of convincing love between the two leads. Unlikable characters combined with unconvincing love story equals a pretty poor romantic film. There are a couple of interesting things within the story, such as Paul's relationship with his farther and how certain aspects of interest can be infectious but these are never explored properly and are left forgotten by the end of the film. There is a strange lack of narrative considering it's based on a hit novel too. It's really drawn out too without ever going anywhere, especially when the ending is so utterly predictable. The acting is fairly atrocious too, making it even harder to watch at times. The late nineties was a great time for me, I was having the time of my life and I remember the year fondly, however, the British film industry was churning out some utter rubbish, Fever Pitch being among one of the most overrated of the dross.