Big Fan

What a poetically sad movie! Patton Oswalt is just amazing and sincere as a sad-sack loser who happens to be a HUGE FAN of the New York Football Giants. So much so that he and his pal Sal watch the games on an old TV in the stadium parking lot - presumably for the ambiance - rather than at home.

When the guys run into the team's star linebacker, they follow him surreptitiously - which leads to a cringe-worthy confrontation and, ultimately, Patton's Paul being beaten very badly. Now he's in an unenviable position: he can press charges, partly for the money and partly to teach these "thug athletes" (term from movie) a lesson, or he can let things go so that the Giants don't suffer as a team. This is a die-hard fan right here.

His family thinks it's not a tough decision. His local-celebrity brother, a personal-injury lawyer, certainly wants Paul to sue. His mom wants him out of the house (yes, he lives with his mom). But Paul feels a strange, strong loyalty to the player and the team, despite his severe injuries.

Oswalt is really amazing here. He's not funny. He's never funny. He's just the epitome of pathetic, and Oswalt's portrayal is as authentic as they come. There's so much to him as a character that the ending is an interesting surprise, too.

There's no on-field football action, so if you're looking for sportsing, you're out of luck. This is a character study, and is an exquisitely detailed one. A fine, if somber, movie.

"Big Fan" is an unpleasant movie about an extremely unpleasant man.

Patton Oswalt plays a dumpy 37-year-old loser who lives with his mother and spends his life living vicariously through the glories of the New York Giants. On a night out on the town, he and his buddy catch sight of their favorite player and follow him to a nightclub. When they approach him, a misunderstanding leads to Oswalt getting badly beaten by him. But he refuses to take legal action against him despite the admonishments of his family, because he'd rather see his favorite player able to lead his team to a win than seek remuneration for himself.

"Big Fan" starts out as a low-key comedy, but gradually picks up dark overtones and seems like it's going to take its audience to some uncomfortable places. Oswalt's character comes across as a schlubby but mostly decent guy at first, but as the movie progresses, we start to wonder if he might be mentally unhinged. However, a cop-out ending lurches the film back into uneasy dark comedy, and basically asks us to find Oswalt's character endearing even though he's been nothing but off putting.

The tone is all over the place, the comedy never really working. If the film had acknowledged that Oswalt's character is a loser, and made some kind of point about the fine line that begins to separate hobby from obsession, it might have been more interesting. But it instead asks us to take his side, and seems to take the stance that his obsession is just the healthy interest of your everyday man-child. The movie goes out of its way to make Oswalt's family into obnoxious caricatures, and we're not supposed to like them because they think he needs to get a life, but guess what....his family seemed to me to make a lot of sense.

Pretty much the definition of a misfire.

Grade: C

Big Fan stands as a profound and thoroughly remarkable character study marked by a magnetic performance of Patton Oswalt. He excels as Paul Aufiero, a life-long fan of New York Giants being brutally hit by one of Giants' top players in a strip club. Oswalt is equally sympathetic and believable starring as this deeply troubled character. His performance is the chief, but thankfully not the only reason to see Big Fan. Writer-director Robert Siegel regards the sports fanaticism as an addiction and that gives his film the necessary gravitas: its power and its credibility. The script is devoid of clichés with many well-observed situations thrown in and several ingenious twists you won't see coming. As a result, you observe Paul falling into decay with great anxiety combined with care. Siegel crafts a subversive comedy, funny and bleak in equal measures. It also works as a peculiar take on the pathology of sports mania.

Simplicity is a rare commodity in today's fast moving, conglomerate world, but for Paul Aufiero (Patton Oswalt) there's only one thing that matters in his life. Everything else is irrelevant in comparison and it isn't his wife, or his child, or his family in general; it is the American Football team the New York Giants. As the self-proclaimed 'biggest Giants fan ever' Paul lives, breathes, shouts, screams, and sleeps everything about the team. He even situates a poster featuring his favourite player Quantrell Bishop (Jonathan Hamm), the Giants quarterback, above his single-bed. But when an opportunity arises to meet Quantrell, the player mistakes Paul for a stalker and violently strikes out causing his instant hospitalisation. Once released he has to come to terms with the fact that his simple, linear life is now starting to crash around him, like a fumble in the final moments of the Super Bowl, as his family, the media and the team all want a piece of the Giants 'Big Fan'.

Written and directed by Robert Siegel on a minimal budget, 'Big Fan' is a surprising independent gem that attains the majority of its prowess from an outstanding offensive performance by Patton Oswalt as the man who lives for the Giants. His support is monumental as he travels week in and week out to merely sit in the car-park outside Meadowlands Stadium and watch the game on a portable TV with his right-hand fan Sal (Kevin Corrigan). While he spends his job as a parking attendant writing up witty remarks to use on the Sports Dogs nightly call-in Sports show – of which one participant called Philadelphia Phil becomes Paul's nemesis over-time. There banter over the airwaves becomes one of the biggest driving forces of Paul's life while he isn't thinking about the next game. But after the assault takes place, his loyalty, and in turn his life starts to become torn apart. His family want him to turn the event in an opportunity to sue the player; the local authorities want him to press charges against quarterback, while the team are on a losing streak as Quantrell has been suspended while the investigation is on-going. All the while, all Paul wants is to support the team and nothing more. He doesn't have the greed and the ambition that others do. To him the Giants are his life-support machine, and if you take those away he would flat-line in an instant.

While Oswalt's performance is mesmerising, Robert Siegel's writing and direction must also be commended. His script is honest and straight-to-the-point, he captures it captures all the awkward events of Paul's life perfectly, including the argument between the brothers on the toilet. While he uses the space of the world around him perfectly to capture Paul's subtle isolated life brilliantly and at the same time Siegel also uses the, sometimes overtly exaggerated, close-up shot to portray the characters emotions within this one man's own perfect universe. 'Big Fan' is low budget, high impact film that thrives off a gleaming central performance by Patton Oswalt, and is definitely one of the best independent films of the last couple of years.

Oswalt plays a guy you might call a loser, but his character wouldn't agree. He's not as over-the-top into loserdom as DiNiro in "King of Comedy." He's not delusional, in other words, just passionate. His team means more than anything to him, and if they are doing OK, he is content. In his world, he has status, and he's just not interested in anything outside that world.

I was surprised to see real acting going on, not comedy. (I won't say "just" comedy - that's hard as hell and takes real talent.) Nothing milked for laughs, nothing that broke the boundaries of the world of the story. A reviewer said Oswalt was "fearless", and I agree. William Goldman wrote of stars that you can never make their parts cool enough for them. That's why so many movies are so terrible. Oswalt has never seemed that interested in being cool. Instead, he dives into his character, as sympathetic or unsympathetic as the moment requires. Not a shtick: character.

It is a low budget production, but I felt it was adequate. The production values didn't hurt. And it is funny, just not 3 jokes / page of script.