Fever Pitch (also titled A Fan’s Life) is an autobiographical book created by Nick Hornby in 1992. Telling the story of the author’s connection with the Football team, Arsenal, and the matches that he remembers from a young age all the way up to his early thirties. The book did pretty well over in the UK where it sold over a million copies, and even led to two film versions being made; one made in 2005 with a change of focus onto Baseball with Jimmy Fallon and Drew Barrymore, and the one of topic today, the 1997 version. English teacher Paul Ashworth (played by Colin Firth) is obsessed with the Arsenal football team and seems to be content with his lonely life until he meets new teacher, Sarah Hughes (played by Ruth Gemmell). Starting a relationship together, he finds that his passion for the sport is overlapping into his real life and pushing away everyone around him. With Arsenal heading for the finals, he has to decide whether he wants to give up the life-long running obsession and live like a stable adult. Going against what any person would expect from a movie based on sports in the late 90s, the movie is not a simple repeat of The Mighty Ducks storyline, which is the common kids-sports formula used even in current times. With a heavy focus on stretched out sports enthusiasm and the mania surrounding the fanbase, the movie seems to be tackling a more interesting take on the sports formula. Unfortunately, not only does the movie not address the more interesting and negative aspects of this lifestyle (instead strangely glorifying it), but it also does it in a horribly bland and terribly unlikeable way.

The movie is segmented into three chunks of opposing qualities. The first third of the movie is actually pretty reasonable and serviceable. Though still a bit bland in presentation and energy, the direction of the story seems to be more of a focus on the effects that sports can have on a person (both good and bad) as well as the mania associated with specifically Football and how it has somehow created this separation from ordinary people and uncultured ‘’yobs’’. While the romance was still uninteresting, it seemed to be going in the right direction. In the second half, things started to feel more cliched, more predictable, more groan-worthy, and a lot longer. With the romance taking a more forward approach and the sport obsession feeling far more destructive and unhealthy than originally, the movie’s mood suddenly becomes more cynical and wrong in how it approaches its themes and characters, making it sound like it’s okay to act childishly selfish towards a hobby and push away other things in life. The third act takes what was already pretty annoying territory and blows it up to a thousand to the point that its practically unwatchable. Its staggering that the film believes its portrayal of a passion this destructive can somehow get someone a great job and a successful relationship. It seems to throw away the themes that could have been built up from the first half, not only ignoring them but contradicting them, and the romance which was already the most boring part, was filled with no development or sacrifice from the main character, only complaining and selfishness and it works out in the end. Even the way the movie’s told is confusing, as the film features flashbacks and yet never specifically points out who is being focused on, having to figure it out for yourself later on.

The progression of Colin Firth’s character’s level of enjoyment falls down fast and hard. With no disrespect towards Colin Firth or the man this story is based on, this movie makes this lead character horrendously unlikeable by the film’s completion. From the start, he seems shady and ‘kinda off’, but not really unlikeable yet, but by the halfway mark, how he acts because of the sport is unbearable. They are either amazingly juvenile and selfish, or just plain stupid and irresponsible. What should be a story about a man using his sport to cope with a past family problem, comes across as a man-child refusing to grow up and centring his entire life on this one team, to the point that he values it more than his career and girlfriend. With no sympathy towards his actions, no development throughout the film, Colin Firth is way above any of this material, the film’s odd ideology that this way of life isn’t wrong, but that the audience should like and feel for this guy by the end where he’s rewarded for his constant whining, he proves to be the worst part of this whole movie. The love interest strangely has the opposite direction to the lead, she gets more watchable as the film goes on. While she starts off pretty flat and opposing as the uptight female love interest, the levels of sympathy get higher and higher after the audience sees what she is paired up with. With a more sympathetic direction in the story and even Ruth Gemmell getting a bit better as the film goes along, it’s a complete turnaround by the end, making it even more insufferable that she stays with this jerk after he flat-out screamed in her face. The film doesn’t really have side characters aside of each main character’s best-friends played by Holly Aird and Mark Strong, and to their credit, they do fine in their bit roles at least.

Despite this film being labelled as a romantic comedy, the film features no sense of romance or comedy whatsoever. The romance starts off with a predictable set-up with two opposites falling for each other immediately after pointless bickering, yet instead of making it about the sacrifices both have to make in order to have a healthy future life, the film instead makes the man uncomfortably unlikeable and sending all the flags that he will ruin her hopeful future, and yet she throws it away for him by the end. Ignoring the fact that the two have no chemistry, a romance should not be this obviously wrong to the point that it is blatant that these two do NOT belong together. As well as that, the film is in no way funny. The entire atmosphere of the film feels genuine enough where it feels like a small town in England with how everything looks, everyone talks and the drearier mood surrounding most of the area. This tone and atmosphere equal a more serious realistic form of comedy without any slapstick, good lines or dramatic situations, instead relying on purely verbal material, and it never once gets a laugh, only annoyance.

Britain has a very strong ”football’ mania and that could have been shown off here, but instead everybody just gets to see the worst possible outcome of said craze. What looks like a standard sports type movie from the outset, starts off as a more unique look on the topic without a clear direction, and tragically not only gets heavily predictable by the end, but far FAR worse as it closes. It’s hard to say that this is technically a terrible movie as it seems like its directed fine, shot fine and even most of the actors aren’t terrible -its just a movie that wastes a lot of its good ideas and parades a lot of its bad ones. Most of the negativity comes from its main character, who is just impossible to like and yet the movie feels like we do. Enjoying a hobby as an adult is perfectly fine and even slightly admirable in ways, but not to this extent. While the real-life person is most definitely not as bad as he was portrayed in this film, but this film makes this character come across as pathetic. Not even worth watching, a pure skip. This is a fever pitch that is a complete penalty fail.