Review: Big Fan

Face paint, rage and the heartbreak of being a fan.

Submitted by mike, 12/03/09 3:21 PM

Robert D. Siegel’s directorial debut Big Fan is as remarkable for what it isn’t as for what it is, and that’s something that’s said with real, heartfelt admiration. The  long-time editor and editor-in-chief of The Onion and writer of last year’s incredible The Wrestler has made a film about an obsessive, lives-with-his-mom football fan (comedian Patton Oswalt) that examines the dynamic between athlete and booster that’s serious and intelligent, without straying into the crazy stalker/murder territory covered by films like The Fan or Misery. A true on-the-cheap independent, the film is a quietly great character piece about a man having to make a difficult decision about the nature of his relationship to the team he loves.

Paul Aufiero is a big fan of the New York Giants. He lives in a room with football posters in his mother’s house, and works in a parking lot booth at night, where he scripts the calls he makes to the Sports Dog radio call-in show, where he engages in a rivalry with Eagles fanatic Philadelphia Phil. He and his best friend and fellow fan Sal (Kevin Corrigan) watch home games from the parking lot outside Giants stadium and away games in front of a chips and root-beer littered table in Sal’s apartment. Paul is hounded by his mother, his successful litigator brother and his brother-in-law to do something with himself, to move out, but he seems content being a fan. After seeing their favourite player, Quantrell Bishop (Johnathan Hamm), at a gas station on Staten Island, Paul and Sal, fascinated, follow him into Manhattan, and into an expensive club. The pair gradually work up the courage to approach Bishop, and manage to introduce themselves, much to the derision of Bishop’s posse. Paul explains that they followed him from Staten Island, which enrages the football player, who then puts Paul into the hospital with a cerebral haematoma. When he wakes up, Paul discovers that Bishop has been suspended from play indefinitely due to his actions, pending an investigation, and that the Giants lost. Paul must decide what to do: tell the police the details of the attack and doom his team to a lost season and personal humiliation at the hands of Philadelphia Phil, or forget the whole thing and move on.

The discovery in the film is Oswalt – we knew after The Wrestler that Siegel could write – who as Paul Aufiero has every opportunity to wring as many laughs as he can out of his character but more often than makes much more interesting choices. At the start of the third act, after the beating, Paul’s brother (Gino Cafarelli) accuses Paul of being brain-damaged, and it’s a sign of the quality of Oswalt’s performance and Siegel’s script and direction that that’s not a joke or a throw-away insult. Paul Aufiero is a character that is totally familiar to anyone that’s watched sports in a bar or listened to talk radio but is at the same time a total cipher, with occult, deeply felt motivations. Aufiero could very well be brain damaged but he could very well just be different, happy subsuming his self into the identity of fan, of true supporter. Oswalt’s performance is fantastic. Siegel’s direction is solid, wringing as much grit and realism out of a guerilla-style shoot in the parking lot of the stadium as possible, and it’s a testament to his seriousness as a filmmaker that none of his characters - the slimy litigator brother, the nagging mother - are less than three-dimensional in a story where the audience all but expects broad types. Big Fan has some slow spots, some thin spots a small budget couldn’t quite cover, but ultimately it’s more than held aloft on the back of a great, smart script and a handful of great performances, Oswalt’s chief among them. 8/10.