Moneyball

Moneyball (2011)

Directed by Bennett Miller

Written by Aaron Sorkin and Steven Zaillian

Story by Stan Chervin

Based on the book, "Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game" by Michael Lewis

Stars: Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Chris Pratt, Stephen Bishop, Casey Bond, Nick Porrazzo, Kerris Dorsey and Robin Wright

I have to get this out of the way. I saw that the Metacritic of this movie was 87. Hmm... personally, I don't like baseball even thought I help out to park people for Astros games. Ironic, huh? I was mildly interested in this movie when it was released last September. Seeing that it scores six Oscar nominations, I had to see what the fuss about. People think that this movie is a home run, but I felt like it was a bunt.

Billy Beane (Pitt) was a baseball player who was drafted into major league baseball out of high school and was not right to be a big star. He is now a general manager of the Oakland Athletics (I hate that name) that came off of a bad 2001 - 2002 season where the team didn't make it to the playoffs. Other top tier organizations are snatching up their stars players like Johnny Damon, Jason Giambi and Jason Isringhausen for more money that they could pay for. Reeling from the loss, Beane tries to find a different way to have a winning team for the next season. He enlists the help of Peter Brand (Hill), a Harvard grad that introduces Billy to sabremetics, which is basically make an equation about who the best people to draft into the them. He puts all of his faith into a man that doesn't know that much about baseball.

Being that I don't like baseball anymore, I tried to like the movie, but I was bored with it. Okay. Not much as much uninterested. I thought the first half of the movie was decent. There was a specific about why Beane doesn't watch the games that made me give up on the movie. I was checking to see how much time is left on the movie. I was looking up the real people of this movie. I learned that one of the characters has been changed from the book to the movie, because the real person didn't like the why that were portrayed.

I would normally not spoil a movie, but this movie is based on real events. The Oakland A's didn't make it to the World Series that year. If the only purpose of this movie was to gloat about a winning streak, this film should not have been made. Period. Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill were nominated for their roles. They were fine. Not Oscar worthy performances. I thought why was Philip Seymour Hoffman in this movie with a thankless role as the manager of the team. He had nothing to do. He was just there.

My Rating