‘Fever Pitch’ Is More Like a Moderate Case of Flu

If you are a fan of soccer or rock music -- and I fall fervently into both camps -- you have probably read, nodded, laughed and winced knowingly through Nick Hornby’s bookend examinations of obsession and arrested development, “Fever Pitch” and “High Fidelity.”

For those of us who care deeply about Arsenal’s inability to cope with the European Champions League or how the Clash’s “Sandinista!” continues to be criminally underrated, Hornby’s books ring with the resonance of a true believer’s public confessional, codified comfort for the similarly afflicted that tends to genuinely frighten outsiders who just don’t get it and would prefer to keep it that way.

Besides their eccentricity and idiosyncrasies, these books are grounded in English perspective and experience. “Fever Pitch,” published in 1992, dealt with Hornby’s growing up in London while addicted to one of the city’s top soccer teams, Arsenal. “High Fidelity,” coming four years later, took the same species of obsession and stocked it in the record racks of a London music store.

Good writing is universal, so it was only a matter of time before Hollywood came knocking at Hornby’s door.

Hollywood being Hollywood, it couldn’t resist uprooting both books and Americanizing them. “High Fidelity” was airlifted to Chicago, and now “Fever Pitch” has been recast in Boston -- with the makeover pushing well past the extreme, with baseball and the Boston Red Sox replacing soccer and Arsenal as Our Hero’s burning passions.

Both movies first tested these shores with two of the least promising trailers of the last decade. The “High Fidelity” preview was so horrific, I swore I’d never watch the movie until a couple of friends reported back from scouting missions that John Cusack and Jack Black had pulled off a minor miracle, the script was a pleasant surprise and it was safe to go ahead and buy a ticket.

The trailer for “Fever Pitch” is even worse -- a teeth-gnashing montage of Farrelly Brothers slapstick exploding around the cringe-inducing concept of lightweight goofball Jimmy Fallon trying to carry the franchise.

The good news is that the rest of the movie rises above the trailer, but who wants to see a film based on such faint praise?

The not-so-good news is that this is the second movie adaptation of “Fever Pitch” -- the first, in 1997, starred Colin Firth as an actual Arsenal supporter -- and we are still waiting for the first one to capture the heart, soul and warped mind of the book.

Hornby’s book begins with the memorable opening line: “I fell in love with football as I was later to fall in love with women: suddenly, inexplicably, uncritically, giving no thought to the pain or disruption it would bring to it.”

Maybe too memorable. With both movie versions of “Fever Pitch,” you sense the studio executives never got past that first sentence, pounding their fists on the table and exclaiming, “We’ve heard enough! Let’s make it a romantic comedy!”

There is romance in Hornby’s book, but it involves the largely unrequited love affair between the author and Arsenal, which went 18 years between English First Division championships, from 1971 to 1989. There is comedy as well, but it is mostly the tragic kind, as Hornby recounts, with self-deprecating humor, how he tried -- and usually failed -- to hold on rationally during those dry years.

Easy parallels can be drawn between Arsenal and the Red Sox. As with the Red Sox, Arsenal once was famed for its tortuous near misses and inexplicable collapses. Both teams play in old, revered stadiums that for a long time seemed haunted by grudge-holding greater beings.

But whereas Hornby’s book dwells on the wrenching emotional investment that comes with supporting a team that never wins it all, the new movie only winks at it. How do we know Fallon’s Ben Wrightman is a tormented soul? Look, he has Red Sox bedsheets! His closet has more Red Sox replica jerseys than business shirts! He goes in on season tickets with his buddies and makes them dance in order to earn a pair for a home game against the Yankees!

Boy -- nudge, nudge -- anybody that crazy surely must have suffered following that team!

Ben is a ninth-grade geometry teacher and a junior varsity baseball coach, and at one point in the movie one of his players asks him, “You love the Sox, but have they ever loved you back?”

Finally, you think, the script is getting around to the essence and spirit of Hornby’s book.

Uh-uh. Ben responds with a dumb joke about Dr. Phil and changes the subject, and the movie quickly dogpaddles back into shallow waters.

The essence and spirit of the movie is the relationship between addled Ben and Drew Barrymore’s overachieving Lindsey Meeks; it could have been titled “Romancing the Geek.” The Red Sox are just a prop to create the requisite tension. Ben’s character is obsessed, but that obsession could have been about anything. Video games. “Star Wars.” Disappointing movies by the Farrelly Brothers.

One similarity between the book and the movie: At the end, when neither Hornby nor Wrightman can possibly expect it, their teams do the unthinkable and win the big one.

In the book, Arsenal’s unlikely championship is the emotional payoff, a resolution that is satisfying and hilarious as Hornby grapples for words to describe a sensation he thought he’d never experience.

In the movie, the Red Sox’s 2004 World Series victory feels almost in the way -- tacked on, as it actually was, with the Farrellys calling for a last-chapter rewrite after fact proved stranger than fiction last fall.

Red Sox fans are grumbling about Fallon and the movie, but for them, there is this bit of encouragement: In 1991, two years after Hornby’s team had its climactic championship breakthrough, Arsenal won the title again.