"Fever Pitch" was aimed a little higher, outside the strike zone where Peter and Bobby Farrelly have honed their extreme-comedy skills ever since "Dumb and Dumber." Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel's script purports to be an adaptation of Nick Hornby's memoir, but it's really extrapolated from the 1996 British movie version, which cast Colin Firth as a fanatical Arsenal follower whose life is turned upside-down when he falls for a civilian woman.

Thus, the American remake bears almost no resemblance to the original text. It's the tale of Drew Barrymore's Lindsey, a brainy executive who meets and falls for Jimmy Fallon's Ben, a self-deprecating schoolteacher, over one lovely Boston winter. But when spring blooms, so does Ben's demented love of the Red Sox -- a lifelong worship that borders on zealotry, and one that Lindsey has a little trouble fitting into her sports-agnostic universe.

She's not the only one with troubles. The Farrelly brothers do their best to reconcile their love of cheap pratfalls and gross-out jokes with "Fever Pitch's" chick-flick sensibility, but they've never been particularly skillful filmmakers, and their ineptitude with actors, casting and pacing undercuts virtually every scene in the picture. (They really, really have to stop giving their high-school friends speaking parts. Seriously.)

Consider the editing: It's clear that the movie's first act was shot two ways, in order to offer the directors a choice between bringing the audience into Ben's obsession from the beginning, or revealing it only when Lindsey finds out around half an hour into the action. This isn't a spoiler - the Farrellys wound up going with both versions, which forces the movie to stop dead while the characters discuss things we already know in detail.

There's also the problem of the Red Sox inconveniently winning the World Series last year for the first time in nearly a century, which has the unintended effect of validating Ben's pointless faith in the team and undermining the film's climax, set during the American League playoffs. Back-date the film to 2003, you don't have a problem. But then you don't get the rousing climax the movie didn't need in the first place. Like I said, the Farrellys don't really know what they're doing.

But still, somehow, even though the gags about food poisoning and bad hair keep pulling you out of the love story, "Fever Pitch" plugs along. Barrymore's charming enough for both herself and her co-star -- which is good, because Fallon's still too lightweight to be believable as a leading man. Too bad Colin Firth wasn't available.

Fox's DVD -- available in full-frame and enhanced-widescreen editions -- supplements the film with usual array of extras that accompany the Farrellys' films. You get the brothers' audio commentary, which spends all of its time pointing out the filmmakers' friends and family; the deleted scenes (13 of them this time!) that would have made an already overlong film even, um, overlonger; two really short featurettes produced for the movie's website, a promotional segment shot for Fox Movie Channel and a gag reel, which -- to be honest -- is kinda charming.