Review of Big Fan, opening Sept. 11 at Cinema 21

Big Fan
Director: Robert Siegel
With: Patton Oswalt, Kevin Corrigan, Marcia Jean Kurtz, Michael Rappaport

The best thing about this movie, among a lot of good things, is that a viewer can project her/his own prejudices on to the main characters.  No matter what you think about sports mania, you can find something to seize on.
Paul (Oswalt) is a stunted man-child from Staten Island with a crummy job who lives and dies with the fortunes of his favorite pro football team, the NY Giants.  He has no other life beyond his fealty to the team. 
Each evening, he carefully writes out a rant, which he then delivers at 1 AM to a sports call-in show.  These always touch on 3 items: the stupidity and lack of manhood of the opposing teams; the skill and invincibility of the Giants; and the vileness of Philadelphia, its football team and his nemesis, a fan from Philly who calls into the show.
His calls often rouse his mother from sleep (he lives at home), and they thrill his biggest fan and best pal (Corrigan), who thinks that Paul is a Nietzschean superman.
Corrigan is a one-note character actor.  He always plays a hopeless, dorky shlep, but that note can be done in a major or minor key, augmented or diminished, loud or soft.  He does more with less than anyone since the Ramones.
Oswalt is another story.  He makes this character sympathetic.  Even someone like me, who hates football and thinks that the national IQ drops ten points during the season, feels something like pity for this jerk.  And, he is a jerk.  It’s a major performance.
The plot plays out with Paul being assaulted by his favorite player, an overpaid thug, and refusing to press charges or tell the truth about the attack, for the good of the team.  The climax of the film, a wonderfully goofy spin on going all Taxi Driver on his enemy, is a small gem of dark comedy.
Well played.  Worth seeing.
B+