I am not a fan of the Farrelly brothers, or any of their films, and not of any typical US romantic comedies either (though I do seem to enjoy foreign ones), but I was a huge fan of HIGH FIDELITY which was adapted from a different novel by Nick Hornby, and besides I am from Boston and do know Red Sox fans and how insane they can be. And I was very pleasantly surprised by this film. I laughed really hard, and really enjoyed the film all the way through, and it also boggles the mind that the Farrelly brothers just happened to chose the year the Soxs finally broke the curse as the year to do this film! This is an enjoyable film with like-able characters, and is much more enjoyable than I could have ever expected. A highly recommend this film.

REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS…

Drew Barrymore plays Lindsey Meeks, a high strung high paid mathematician who works on probabilities for companies, who is hoping to get a big promotion from someone who has retired at the company. She meets Ben (Jimmy Fallon) who is a high school teacher who brings some of his best math students to meet her, and see how mathematics can make money. Lindsey and Ben start seeing each other, and she thinks he is the perfect guy, at least until Baseball season. First for Easter she invites Ben to meet her parent’s but he is planning a trip with his friends and she ends up seeing him and his friends being total freaks in Florida at spring training, and then things get worse. He is a red sox fanatic and has box seats he inherited from his uncle, who used to take him there when he was a kid and lonely, and still knows all the people in the seats around him like Artie (Scott H. Severance). First they have a pregnancy scare, and it is when he wouldn’t go to Paris with her because of some games, but they endure for then. Eventually he realizes he must change for her, or she will leave him, and he goes to a party with her instead of going to a game that will be a sure loss against the Yankees, and he admits to having the best night of his life with her, but then he learns it was the greatest come back in Red Sox’s history, and possibly their best game ever, and he freaks out, and they break up. He wants to get back together, saying he will change, and she doesn’t accept it because it is almost winter and the season is over, and she can’t take his fanaticism. At a dinner she hears that one of her friend’s husbands is purchasing Ben’s box seats, and then she learns she gets her promotion, and when giving her speech she realizes he loves the Red Sox like she loves her work, and she realizes she can’t make someone give that up, so she goes to the game buys some seats, and to get to him must run across the field and be arrested, but not before stopping him, and telling him she loves him. And the story ends happily with them getting married and getting pregnant, and them being at all the games seems to have brought good luck and let the red sox’s win!

As I said, a fun and enjoyable film, and well worth seeing. And Drew Barrymore has lost some weight, and retains her dorkiness that makes her so appealing, and Jimmy Fallon doesn’t go over the top like most SNL alumni tend to do. Well worth checking out.