I just saw "Fever Pitch," the new Jimmy Fallon / Drew Barrymore romantic comedy about the Red Sox. I'll admit I'm hard-pressed to come up with a baseball movie I didn't like, but I really enjoyed this one. It was consistently funny, and sweet, and emotionally resonant -- AND it was about baseball. Where could it go wrong? Truth is, I felt like it hit pretty much every note. I mean, at its heart it's a standard romantic comedy, so the plot points are predictable, a lot of things are over-the-top, everyone talks in punchlines... but still, within the formula, it totally works. It's actually funny, and smart. And there's more than enough baseball stuff going on to make it legitimately a baseball movie. Roger Ebert likes it too. The bad: not too much. His pack of friends and her pack of friends are straight out of central casting and almost entirely a waste. The beginning is a little slow. The end wraps it up a little quick. But I'm quibbling. This is a fun, enjoyable movie, that I thought ended up totally worth seeing. I even felt some tears welling up in my eyes a couple of times toward the end. Best movie I've seen in 2005. Then again, so far it's the only movie I've seen in 2005, I think. I mean, the characters are so ridiculously likable throughout the movie, even when they're doing stupid things, that you can't help but root for them.

Although, honestly, part of why it worked for me is because it's a movie where the grownup who acts like he's twelve wins in the end and gets the girl. And we need more of those movies, because they give hope to those of us who sometimes feel like we're still twelve.

Okay, go see the movie. Especially if you're a baseball fan. And ESPECIALLY if you're a Red Sox fan. There's so much Red Sox in here. This movie is probably going to play to empty theaters in New York, but I saw it in a practically-full, ENORMOUS stadium-seating theater at Boston Common, and the crowd was part of the experience. It played really well for the Boston audience. Take your Yankee-fan friends if you want to torture them.