Review: 'Big Fan'

A die-hard New York Giants fan is beaten up by the star player and struggles with the fallout.

Robert Siegel, the writer-director of "Big Fan," was also the writer of "The Wrestler," last year's most overrated movie. In some ways, I like this one more, but it's yet another grunge fest. Paul (Patton Oswalt) is a dumpy parking garage attendant from Staten Island who lives with his mother and spends his late-night hours calling into his local sports radio station where he rallies the troops for his favorite football team, the New York Giants. When a chance encounter with the Giants star linebacker (Jonathan Hamm) turns ugly, Paul's already sodden life goes into a tailspin. Oswalt captures the rabidness of the die-hard fan, the kind you can hear at any moment on the sports talk shows, but Siegel's decision to turn the movie into a species of "Taxi Driver" is as fatuous as the same decision made by the filmmakers of the Seth Rogen mall cop comedy "Observe and Report" earlier this year. Grade: B-