In both book and film form, Nick Hornby's High Fidelity strikes a nice balance in portraying the appealing world of music obsessives and the ways their obsession separates them from the rest of humanity. Substitute soccer for music and you pretty much have Fever Pitch, Hornby's memoir of life as a diehard Arsenal booster (roughly the equivalent of supporting the Cincinnati Reds, Detroit Lions, or any other sports team that never quite reaches greatness). Hornby scripted this fictionalized 1997 adaptation, but the dramatic equilibrium of his best work seems to have abandoned him. Primarily a modest but engaging romantic comedy—never mind the tacky soft-core packaging of the American video release—Fever Pitch contains the stirrings of a far more successful and incisive look at why sports matter. Colin Firth stars as a high-school English teacher with an enthusiasm for Steinbeck and Byron that's frequently upstaged by his love for sport. Ruth Gemmel plays the stern-but-vulnerable teacher in the classroom next door. He hasn't grown up and fears commitment; she has and doesn't. Set during Arsenal's 1989 run for the championship, what comes next, despite good performances and snappy dialogue, feels seriously overdetermined. But through it all, Hornby and director David Evans weave in a good deal of interesting material about how much ordinary people come to invest in the performance of their favorite teams, the ways those feelings can affect (or infect) other aspects of their lives, and how a shared affection can bring together people with virtually nothing else in common. A minor pleasure as it stands, Fever Pitch begs for a remake with a less familiar romantic plotline, and with John Cusack as a White Sox season-ticket holder.