WasAnnon Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

Lucybespro It is a performances centric movie

Stellead Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

SanEat A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

The Couchpotatoes Nice movie about how fanatic people can be when it's about their favorite sports team. It doesn't matter which sport it is, American football or soccer or whatever other sport. Some people dedicate their life to their team and if you are not one of them you probably won't understand this movie completely. I did, and I thought it was a nice movie about the dedication he has for his team, the NY Giants, and for one player in particular. Patton Oswalt plays Paul Auferio, hardcore fan of the Giants, that suddenly becomes a victim and the cause of the failing of his favorite team. He struggles with the things he should do. His family tries to convince him to go for the big money, but as a fan he is not interested in that. Very well done from Patton Oswalt. Nice to see him in a different role then we are used to see him. I enjoyed this movie, and I think even non sports fanatics will also enjoy it.

The_Film_Cricket Everyone obsesses about something. Whether we admit it or not, there's a super fan buried in all of us. Hobbies fill our lives with something other than bills, weather and being on time for work. Yet, as they say, too much of anything is a bad thing, and it is possible to garner an obsession with anything: movies, sports, television, comic books, pornography, shopping, your job, your kids, your religious beliefs. Even personal obsessions like rage, self-pity, gossip or just simply complaining. However, I think most of us have a filter. We know when to turn it off before it tips over into darkness.Paul, the central figure of Big Fan, has a filter with a lining that is dangerously thin. His whole existence is so wrapped up in his love for the New York Giants that all the other things in his life have been thinned down to make room for his favorite team. He is 35, chubby, lives in Staten Island with his mother and works as a parking garage attendant, where he spends his nights writing himself a script for what he is going to say on the Sports Dogg radio program where is a minor celebrity. He has no social life to speak of and his mother comments that is only romantic attachment is with his right hand. She's wrong, of course.It can be said that there are two sides to Paul's life, an inner circle and an outer circle. The inner circle contains his love of The Giants, the outer circle contains a void in which resides everything else: family, work, the future. That shows up on his face where his face lights up when he is in the throws of the game and grow dark and frustrated when he has to deal with real life. His mother nags him mercilessly that he needs to find a nice girl and have a family. "I don't want any of that!" he shouts - he already has a family. She dotes on her other son, Jeff (Gino Cafarelli) who is an ambulance- chasing lawyer who appears in daytime television commercial asking "Have you been injured?" and promises "I will fight for you!" Paul's best (and apparently only) friend is Sal (Kevin Corrigan) who joins him in his love of the team, even when the two sit in the cold in the parking lot of Giants stadium watching the game on a portable television set. They talk about nothing else. Their rapture is the thrill of fandom, even in the off-season.A test of Paul's faith and loyalty begins one night when he is out driving around with Sal and spots Giants quarterback Quantrell Bishop (Jonathan Hamm) at a gas station. They follow him into a rough neighborhood where they don't make the connection that he and his entourage have come to buy drugs. Later at a strip club they introduce themselves. Bishop suspects that they are cops about to bust him and he beats Paul into unconsciousness.Where Big Fan really comes to its crossroads is what happens next. Paul wakes up in a hospital with brain injury and a room full of people urging him to sue Bishop. He learns that Bishop might not be able to play in the next game and decides not to sue or to turn over any information to the cops. This is, of course, baffling to those around him but to Paul it would upset the balance of his world. Bishop is a personal hero and Paul wrestles with this soul over whether or not to give him up.The events that take place with Bishop only make up the framework for Big Fan which is more about the turmoil of Paul's conscience. His hero failed and he has him in the cross-hairs to get him in a lot of trouble. His depression and frustration pull him in both directions, but for him it is all about not upsetting the balance. Giants football isn't a game, it is a conduit of his life and his self-worth. Anything outside that sphere is, for him, meaningless.Big Fan was written and directed by Robert Siegel, a former editor of The Onion and screenwriter of The Wrestler, also about a man and the sport he loves. I was fascinated by the fact that his screenplay keeps the story at a realistic level. Even when it approaches the bizarre at the end, we can still believe what we are seeing. It might be easy for this screenplay to become a stalker film or to cross over into the level of Taxi Driver. It comes close to that, but it stays mostly at ground level. What happens to Paul in the end isn't far from the truth.What makes Big Fan really work though is the performance of Patton Oswald as Paul. Oswalt is a stand-up comedian best known to most movie fans as the voice of Remey in Pixar's Ratatouille. Here he creates a character that looks like your average sports fan. He is short, overweight, with a bad haircut and an otherwise not-too-extraordinary appearance. Even in the darkest moments, Paul is someone that we can't help but like.

phat_cat I gave this movie a chance on the movie network on demand. I already knew this was a low budget film and I have seen the main character do his stand up routine so I wasn't expecting much. I was interested in the beginning of the movie as it seemed to have a nice premise and good character development. After 25 minutes in or so I was thinking to myself what am I watching? Where is this movie going? And why hasn't it started to go there yet? The plot was building very slowly. And some consider this a comedy, I didn't even realize this until I read up more about the movie. The only thing this movie has going for it is the very ending where he shoots the eagles fan with a paint gun, that was a twist I was not expecting. And the main character really showed his ability of an actor in the ending scene. This movie could have been better in my eyes if they would have had one or two more 'exciting' parts to it like the ending.

Movie_Muse_Reviews As sports fans, we always consider the degree to which we support or dedicate ourselves to the team. "Big Fan" is a character study of a man who has formed his identity and life around the New York Giants. The film preys on our expectation that every fan has a clear line when it's time to stop being a fan and start being your own person. That's not true of Paul Aufiero (Patton Oswalt).The concept of building a film around this type of character allows "Big Fan" to explore the notion of sports psychosis. Writer, director and former Onion editor-in-chief Robert D. Siegel clearly understands that sports films haven't gone in this direction and he already demonstrated the chops to handle unique sports-devoted characters in creating Randy "The Ram" Robinson of Darren Aronofsky's "The Wrestler." In "Fan," his directorial debut, too much of good film convention is sacrificed to create Paul's psychological profile.The best way to describe Siegel's error with the film is that it never goes straight down the path carved out by the set-up. Paul works a job as a parking lot attendant, but off the clock (and back home with his mother) he calls in regularly to his favorite nighttime sports radio program to defend the Giants and talk smack about the Philadelphia Eagles. His favorite player is a defensive lineman named Quantrell Bishop, so instinctively when glimpsing Bishop at a gas station, Paul and his best friend follow him. He ends up at a nightclub and when Bishop suspects him of stalking, he pummels him within an inch of his life.The expectation is that the film will skyrocket from there. The press are sure to be busting down his door, the police will be on his case, etc. The aftermath is much tamer. The press apparently don't even have his name and on three separate occasions, a detective comes to question him only for Paul to say he "doesn't remember" when the truth is he wants Bishop back on the field so that the Giants can continue pursuing the division championship. The movie never really picks up in pace and disappoints in that regard.It's also hard to cozy up to Paul's mindset. Most people wouldn't let even their sports hero walk away if he nearly killed them, at least not without some kind of apology or settlement. He just wants to go back to being an average Giants fan. That's all he wants in this film. He doesn't want to live on his own, get a real job or make millions in a personal injury suit that his brother wants him to file. There's not having traditional values and denouncing the life that your family wants you to lead, but then there's Paul -- an intriguing but fallible concept.The biggest sin of Siegel's story is how it veers away from being about either rectification of the assault or how Paul's life is being forced in a direction he can't cope with as a result. Instead it's about getting back at the Eagles fan (Michael Rapaport) who calls in to Paul's favorite show and trash-talks. Sure, Siegel's point is to show how Paul wants to be a devoted fan above anything else in his life, but in route to telling us that, a lot of basic storytelling principles are violated and for a plot of this magnitude, "Big Fan" is strangely quiet.~Steven CVisit my site http://moviemusereviews.com