I didn’t intend to weigh in on the Moneyball movie because almost everyone else in the whole world already has, but a few people asked me about it so here goes:
I thought it was kind of boring. I didn’t hate it, I just never got all that excited by anything happening on screen.
Granted, I generally prefer movies where stuff explodes and tough guys crack wise and something crazy happens in front of a drunk guy who then looks down at his drink like, “whoa, this is good stuff.” Obviously none of that happened in Moneyball, but none of that happened in The Social Network either and I enjoyed that one.
I guess I should consider the movie’s perspective from the point of view of someone who hasn’t spent countless hours discussing and arguing over the fallout from and subject of the book. From that standpoint, though, I think I might be left wishing the movie more overtly connected some of the theoretical dots, baseball-wise. It shows that Billy Beane and Paul “Peter Brand” DePodesta wanted to acquire inexpensive players with good on-base percentages, but doesn’t really include much detail about why that stat was undervalued elsewhere or how it contributes to winning.
But then I guess I’m only interested in that stuff because I enjoy baseball the way I do. The movie glosses over some of the technical nerdery in favor of sort of 21st-century Robin Hood story, with the cunning and charming Beane and his band of Not Particularly Merry Men (Man, actually — Brand seems to be the only person in the A’s organization on board with Beane’s plans) working to undermine the wealthy (and not depicted) Sheriff of Yankeeham.
And I guess in a way that did happen, and those types of stories always resonate with people (perhaps especially, I should say, in this economy). But the movie seemed more focused on why he did it — a series of internal and external conflicts — than how he did it. I guess acquiring Scott Hatteberg doesn’t exactly necessitate a heist, but hey, it’s Hollywood.
Oh, and the movie spent a lot of time further exposing just how hot Brad Pitt is, which I guess is a tough thing to avoid if you’re making a movie starring Brad Pitt. But at times Moneyball seemed like a film about Brad Pitt’s arm muscles with a baseball subplot.
The movie produced a couple of hearty laughs — many of which were included in the previews, and Chris Pratt was notably good as Hatteberg. Pitt and Jonah Hill were just fine, and Philip Seymour Hoffman was believable enough as Art Howe to make Mets fans everywhere cringe.
The Moneyball movie was a sort-of faithful adaptation to a book that was itself sort-of faithful to what actually happened. It held my interest for most of its two-plus hour run time, but I never got lost in it the way I do in my favorite movies or the way I do, for that matter, in great baseball games.
Tedquarters 