Fever Pitch

Romance blossoms between a driven career woman (Drew Barrymore) and a sweetly nerdy schoolteacher (Jimmy Fallon)—and then baseball season opens, and his fanatical devotion to the Boston Red Sox threatens to ruin everything. There probably won’t be a more pleasant surprise all year than this marvelous, hilariously lovely romantic comedy, which brilliantly plays to the same sports-fan-chick-flick audience as Jerry Maguire. The script by Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel (loosely based on Nick Hornby’s book about his own obsession with soccer) is wise and clever, and the direction of Peter and Bobby Farrelly eschews their usual gross-out gags without sacrificing their spontaneous energy. Barrymore and Fallon have great screen chemistry and give what just may prove to be the performances of their careers. J.L.