2009 sports movieRating: 12/20
Plot: Paul's sort of a loser. He lives with mom who wishes he could be more like his seemingly better-adjusted brother and sister. He's content with a dead-end job at a parking garage. He lives for one thing and one thing only--his New York Giants and their potentially bright future with star quarterback Quantrell Bishop. With pal Sal, he tailgates every Sunday before watching the game on a television in the parking lot of the stadium. On weeknights, he carefully pens some words for a local sports talk radio show, trading trash talk with an Eagles fan called Philadelphia Phil. But a violent encounter with the star quarterback threatens to disrupt his routine and ruin the team's chances of winning the division, and Paul is left to sort it all out.
I certainly wanted to like this movie more than I did. I almost laughed once--at a 50 Cent birthday cake with a "7" candle--but found the majority of what was supposed to be a dark comedy fairly discomforting. Writer/director Robert Siegel and Patton Oswalt take this character to some dark places, crush his bones, spit on him when he's down, and expect us to laugh, but there's not nearly enough of a payoff. Big Fan gets some things right. You could hear a lot of talk show callers (I'm looking at you, Clones) in Paul's scripted phone calls, and I thought Oswalt was excellent in portraying this guy. But too much of this was just difficult to watch--the interactions between Paul and his mother, the building tension as Paul sat watching his idol live it up with his entourage at a club, pretty much every conversation Paul had with anybody not named Sal. Pitiful characters can be funny, I guess, when it feels like they're somehow in on the joke, but with Big Fan, it just didn't feel right to laugh at this guy's pain. Or maybe it just wasn't funny enough. I would have liked some evolution with the character, something to make me think that it was all going to be all right eventually, some glimmer of light that would make it OK to crack a smile. I didn't get it.
This movie also loses a point because of Michael Rapaport. I don't like that guy.
3 comments:
When "The Jungle" first came to WNDE, I was hooked. It was equal parts sports talk and cult of personality. It was one of those rabbit holes I tend to fall into. It had a cast of hundreds, it's own language (bang the monkey), and inside jokes that long outlived whatever created them.
I would work my mindless factory job, writing 'takes' I would never call in to read, in fear I would sound like I was reading. This is in fact the greatest irony of Rome. When someone gets 'a vine' and delivers a obviously written statement, as long as they don't sound like they are reading, it's fine. If they do sound like they are reading or unpracticed, they are banished.
I love Patton Oswalt, and was eager to see him in the non-wacky guy roll. His version of 'a clone' was likely acurate. I think that Oswalt's short, pudgy and sad faced appearence helped in making him seem as unimportant as was.
I did think the payoff was worth the wait. He got a victory, finally. The third act was well paced and tense. It slowed to an umcomfortable crawl, and the release/twist was the point.
I liked this better than Shane, but it is not for everyone. It's hard to watch a loser do nothing to help himself. I would still recomend this to very few people. Even I, The King Of Repeated Viewings, would not go back to this one a second time.
14/20
It took me a while to figure out what was even going on with Rome's show.
Rome is kind of a tool, but ironically we share the same favorite basketball player, Gail Goodrich, so I forgive him his tooliness.
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