Moneyball movie review
Pretty much on the money.
It is a conundrum of my life that I find baseball painfully boring to watch or participate in, but for some reason love baseball movies. Eight Men Out, Major League, the Bad News Bears; they all have a freakish fascination for me. I especially love movies where the team in question is a come from behind underdog. There is just something weirdly fascinating about it for me.
So, Moneyball. I liked it. Fun, interesting, and basically shot around Oakland, the town I have lived in for the last ten years. There is a special thrill when you see a scene shot in the parking lot where one of your friends puked his guts out after getting blackout drunk. You somehow feel closer to the movies.
It is the story of the Oakland A’s, known as the poorest team in professional baseball. One of my favorite actors, Brad Pitt, plays Billy Beane, the Oakland general manager as he struggles to put together a winning team on a budget. The problem is all his best players recently got hired away by other, richer teams and he is left with the dregs. While trying to negotiate a player trade he meets Peter Brand (Jonah Hill, the fat kid from Superbad. He was also in Knocked Up and had a voice over roll in one of my personal favorites, Megamind), a recent Yale graduate with a degree in economics. Turns out young Peter has been looking at baseball players from a statistical analysis point of view, and Billy hires him to help put together a budget team that can win. Peter goes through the dregs of players, looking for ones that can get on base and actually score. They put together a team that, while lacking any major stars that dazzle, manages to deliver a solid performance and set a record breaking winning streak. I won’t spoil the story by telling you how it ends, although if you are familiar with the Oakland A’s you probably already know. (Baseball jersey t shirt image from Eastbound and Down courtesy of the TV show t shirt category)
There are some subplots tied into the team manager having issues with how Billy is putting together his team, Billy’s twelve year old daughter, and a bunch of flashbacks to his own youthful baseball career that honestly seemed a little forced in and pointless. We got some good character development from Billy and his daughter. The flashbacks didn’t seem to add a lot.
The stars. Baseball movie. One star. Brad Pitt. One star. Great performances all around. One star. They didn’t feel compelled to lower the story to the lowest common denominator and crowbar in a stupid hot girl to be some kind of love interest or team intern or whatever. One star. There was a definitive story arc for Billy and you can really see his character develop. One star. The analysis they did made a lot of sense, and nothing seemed weird or out of place. One star. They gave us a nice look into the inner workings of major league baseball and how the whole team development works. One star. Billy’s daughter didn’t annoy. One star. Set in Oakland and about our local team. One star. As far as I know they kept to the actual story. One star. The managed to avoid a dumb Hollywood ending. One more star for an overall good movie experience. Total: twelve stars.
The black holes. Pacing seemed sluggish at times. There were times when I found myself bored as we watched yet another video of some forgotten baseball player with a hidden talent and Peter telling Billy why he was worth looking at. The editing could have been tightened up some. One black hole. There were a couple sub plots that didn’t need to be in the movie, including the whole Billy flashback sequence. Also there was one scene where we meet Billy’s ex wife and her hippy dippy husband that went no where. One black hole. Brad Pitt and about 80% of the cast spent the whole movie dipping, a habit I find uber disgusting. Seriously, it turns my stomach, like a giant pus and maggot hoagie. I know it’s a baseball thing, but it really threw me off the whole time. One black hole. Weirdly enough, in spite of my actual dislike of watching baseball, I feel this movie would have benefited from some more actual baseball footage. A lot of time spent indoors. One black hole. Total: four black holes.
So a grand total of eight stars, a great score for a great movie. Try to see it in a theater, if you can, although there would be nothing wrong with seeing it on your TV. It will work in both venues. Decent date movie too, as there is a lot of humor and heartwarming scenes, particularity with Billy and his daughter.
Killer Elite review tomorrow. I saw it tonight and will write it up in the morning. Thanks for reading. Follow me on Twitter @NerdKungFu. Talk to you soon.
Dave
