‘Everybody’s always so mean…’
As a man in his thirties who collects horror VHS tapes, I know a thing or two about arrested development. While I’m not quite living in my parent’s basement and attending comic-con, I know how it feels to be so wrapped up in fandom and nostalgia that adulthood feels like a mask that you have to wear in public only to be discarded when safely surrounded by your obsession. In my case, that obsession is movies. In writer-director Robert Siegel’s film Big Fan, it’s American football…
Paul Aufiero (Patton Oswalt) is a hardcore New York Giants fan who regularly engages in searing arguments with his rival Philadelphia Phil (Michael Rapaport) on sports radio call-in shows. His obsession is so deep that his family constantly worries about him and the Giants is all he has. Paul shares this obsession with his friend Sal (Kevin Corrigan). Paul begins to question his lifestyle when in a misguided attempt to meet one of his footballing heroes he ends up in hospital.
Big Fan is ostensibly a comedy in the vein of Fever Pitch, but it also contains an undercurrent of sadness. While there is nothing wrong with having a hobby, one only needs to observe football Twitter to see that some people use their sports team as a salve to soothe the loneliness of their everyday lives. Big Fan confronts this and it is in these moments that Big Fan and Oswalt really excel. The third act does a great job of demonstrating what happens when a man-child confronts their lifestyle properly for the first time. It’s sad. Relatable. Surprisingly hard-hitting.
Big Fan starts as one thing and ends as something else entirely. It’s a tonal bait and switch that shouldn’t work but Siegel and Oswalt somehow pull it off.