Movie Review - Big Fan

Statistically speaking, most people will never call a radio station.  A few might try to win a contest; while even fewer may occasionally feel moved to voice an opinion on a topic.  But then there’s the flipside - the type that calls in so often that they become a “regular.”  Nowhere is that person more prevalent than in sports talk radio.  The format’s calculatedly narrow focus not only allows but encourages frequent callers.  Big Fan, written and directed by Robert D. Siegel (writer of The Wrestler) is a character study of just such a caller.  “Paul from Staten Island” (Patton Oswalt), as he is known on the radio, loves the New York Giants.  He calls 760 The Zone almost nightly in order to deliver his meticulously scripted rants against the Giants’ rivals: The Philadelphia Eagles.  Thirty-five and still living with his mother, he composes his diatribes during his job as a parking lot attendant.  Sadly, for all the time and effort he puts into writing these invectives, they are little more than a collection of homeristic sport’s clichés.  Paul is happy with his life even if his family isn’t.  His mother (Marcia Jean Kurtz), sister Gina (Polly Humphreys) and brother Jeff (Gino Cafarelli) want him to find a “real” job and get married.  But Paul is content with football and his lone friend Sal (Kevin Corrigan). 

One night out on the town, Paul and Sal happen across the Giants’ (fictional) star running back Quantrell Bishop (Jonathan Hamm not to be confused with Mad Men’s Jon Hamm).  They follow him to a strip club where they’re barely able to scrape together enough money to get in, let alone buy drinks.  Surrounded by naked women, the two spend their time staring at Bishop and his entourage.  Bishop discovers that Paul followed him to the club and, enraged, he savagely beats him.  Paul awakens from a coma several days later to find that his world has been turned upside.  Bishop has been suspended, his team lost that week’s game and he is now a pariah in among Giants’ fans.

Oswalt, probably best known as the voice of Remy in Ratatouille and/or as Spence on The King of Queens, is a revelation as Paul.  He gives a darkly comic turn as a fan just this side of obsessed.  His is a cheerless existence and, while it’s not a life most would choose, one can’t help but wonder if the cheerlessness is more the result of his family’s vocal dissatisfaction with the path he’s chosen.  Paul is sad and pathetic…but he’s happy that way.  He isn’t without friends (or at least “a” friend), he has a job (though he is admittedly under-employed) and he has passion (even if it is just for football).  That’s a richer life than many people who ostensibly have more.  When he tells his mother that he doesn’t want the life that his brother and sister have, as difficult as it is, you believe him. 

Corrigan as Sal also turns in a wonderful performance as Paul’s loyal and admiring friend.  Corrigan has been kicking around as a character actor for going on twenty years and consistently does yeoman’s work, typically as a quirky and/or creepy character.  His style works equally well in series dramas (American Gangster, The Departed) as it does in comedies (Superbad, Grounded for Life).  He is slowly building a resume that could make him Generation X’s Christopher Walken.

Big Fan is a character sketch that refuses to traffic in clichés.  While it feels a bit padded in towards the middle, it’s an enthralling portrait of a man whose self-esteem is tied to something he can’t control.  Somehow the film manages to simultaneously yet paradoxically provide and deny both a happy ending and a tragic one.  It’s a conclusion that’s both anticlimactic and wholly satisfying.  

On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being Play Misty for Me and 1 being Air Bud: Golden Receiver, Big Fan gets an 8.