Review of Big Fan (2009) by Stevepulaski — 25 Jan 2013

Patton Oswalt's Paul Aufiero is a depressing character to focus on for a full eighty-six minutes. He's a lonely man in his late thirties, living with his mother, making end's meet as a parking garage attendant where he spends his time either sulking at the loneliness of it all or jotting down notes while listening to the broadcast of the New York Giants game so that he can read them aloud on a radio show later that night. Yes, Paul is a "big fan" of the New York Giants, and his devotion is incorruptible, even when the unthinkable happens.

But before I blaze that trail, I return to my point about the notes, which Paul turns into a lengthy rant about how well the Giants played during the game. He will go on to read the rant live on his favorite radio program, hosted by "Sports Dogg," under the ambiguous name of "Paul from Staten Island," where he frequently exchanges punches with "Philadelphia Phil," a frequent caller into the sports station to praise the Philadelphia Eagles and slander the Giants. On the phone, Paul sounds like a totally different man. Not a depressed and listless man in his thirties who resides with his mother, and not a man of no further ambition. Just a passionate and quirky outsider who shows true commitment to what he loves, which is sports. He's the kind of guy you'd want on your side for moral support and a working set of ears.

Paul's only friend is Sal (Kevin Corrigan), and the two show invaluable bonding when they tailgate during the Giants home games and run a long extension cord through their car in order to sit outside the stadium and watch the game happening feet away from them on a puny little antenna TV. One day, Paul and Sal spot Quantrell Bishop (Jonathan Hamm), the Giants quarterback, and his faithful entourage in Staten Island and, in a starstruck-haze, decide to follow him to see if they can snag an autograph or exchange some words. They drive through a bad neighborhood, where Bishop picks up something that likely isn't the most legal thing on the market, and they wind up at a strip club, where the two friends get the courage to walk over and talk to them.

Bishop views them as two loner geeks interrupting his night, and things get rough when Paul accidentally brings up the part about him driving through a rough neighborhood. Bishop assumes they were being followed and, in a fit of rage, beats poor Paul to a pulp and is left unconscious for three days until he wakes up in a hospital bed. There, Paul is informed that his personal-injury lawyer brother (Gino Cafarelli) is ready and willing to cook up a lawsuit, and that an NYPD detective (Matt Servitto) wants to get all the details of what exactly happened the night of the altercation. The problem is that Paul doesn't want to remember what happened that night. To him, Quantrell, regardless of what he did to Paul and how badly he left him damaged, he just wants to move on with his life, unburdened by the incident, and not have his love for the New York Giants soiled by this one unfortunate mishap. Only the conflicts this poses on his family begin to come out of the woodwork. His mother begins to bring up the fact that he is a lonely man, desperately searching for companionship and his brother can not fathom the idea that Paul would not want to pursue a court case or a lawsuit against Quantrell.

Patton Oswalt gives what I call a career making performance in Big Fan. A performance just subtle enough that you may overlook it, yet just powerful enough to you will remember it. Oswalt, rarely leaving frame at all here, is so deeply sympathetic and easy to feel for in this film. But why? The look in his eyes in numerous scenes (take the excitement and expression in his face when he's "Paul from Staten Island" for example, or even when he is being lectured by his mother in the car after his brother's party) often accentuates the feeling of misery or dim joy. He is a figure that we understand his moral position, but question his decision not to move forward with a lawsuit against Quantrell regardless of the "idol-status" he has obtained in Paul's heart.

It is questions like this that are too psychologically complex to answer without oversimplifying and that is what makes Patton Oswalt's character and performance so memorable. We can side with him only to an extent before he makes the decision to move forward and move on from his current problem. I was stunned that director Robert D. Siegel (former editor in chief for the fake newspaper "The Onion") took this material with such depth, heart, and seriousness. Big Fan is a film detailing the dark side of spectator sports, a multi-billion dollar industry that focuses on those who put on a jersey to play and make millions and those who buy overpriced tickets to games in the exact same jerseys that were sold in order to continue fueling the pockets of those involved in the industry.