Starring Jimmy Fallon and Drew Barrymore. Rated PG.

Perhaps the one thing that our divided American neighbours can agree on is their love of baseball. It was the subject of one of Ken Burns's best-loved PBS series, and even President Bush once owned a baseball team. To paraphrase Jon Stewart: baseball is as American as apple pie and, well, itself.

It's ironic, then, that the new baseball movie, Fever Pitch, is adapted from British author Nick Hornby's semiautobiographical novel about one man's obsession with soccer.

A 1997 British film of the same name starred Colin Firth as a man torn between his love of a good woman and his passion for the bottom-dwelling Arsenal Football Club. The current American adaptation stars Jimmy Fallon as a man torn between Drew Barrymore and his majorly beleaguered Boston Red Sox.

Thankfully, Hornby's universal theme of sports loyalty as a metaphor for strength of character and family honour is not lost in transatlantic translation. Fallon is affable enough as superfan Ben, a man-boy at a crossroads between arrested adolescence and emotional growth. His apartment is a living shrine to the ball club he loves, from the Red Sox shower curtain to the "Green Monster" wall of his dining room.

When Ben falls in love with a power-dressing business consultant named Lindsey (Barrymore), both will have to answer some hard questions. Will Ben let go of his baseball lust enough to let Lindsey share his dugout? Can she handle his obsession?

Directors Peter and Bobby Farrelly do a great job showing us the world of the Red Sox fan, and the movie constitutes a more mature Farrelly brothers film, a break from their typical gross-out slapstick (Stuck On You, Shallow Hal), realistically tackling issues of commitment and emotional priority.

Unfortunately, it just isn't that funny as a comedy.

One problem is the cookie- cutter, romantic-comedy-by-numbers script by Hollywood veterans Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel. Another factor is the movie's lead actors. Barrymore is cute and oh-so-likable, but she's not a natural comedian, and she and Fallon lack the chemistry she had with, say, Adam Sandler in The Wedding Singer. Fallon was great at comic impersonations on SNL, but here he seems unsure of who he is. He fares better when he plays it straight, but too often tries too hard, unnecessarily, to be wacky.

Still, Fever Pitch may become a must-see date movie, this generation's When Harry Met Sally.

As it is, though, Fallon and Barrymore manage only to walk a nice little movie home without much hysteria from the bleachers.