Moneyball

Summary:  Billy Beane, the General Manager of the Oakland Athletics, tries to rebuild his team like no other GM has done before.  With a limited budget, he employs someone to help him look at stats and base players on their On Base Percentage (OBP) instead of all the intangibles scouts use.  Three of the A's biggest players leave during the off season, so Beane tries to replace them with lower-paid, less-flashy players.  The manager of the team, Art Howe, doesn't appreciate Beane's methods and resists.  After losing too many games, Beane moves some players around so Howe is forced to play the team the way Bean meant it to be played.  They start winning.

OaTs:  Directed by Bennett Miller, Moneyball based on a true story.  This is where I find most of my problems come in.  His theory of only looking at stats doesn't really work.  They have used it to some extent in the MLB since Beane brought it to everyone's attention, but those intangibles really are key to building a quality team.  And since it only made a slight difference in the A's status, it's hard for me to see how it was such an important story to tell.  This may be a little harsh, but I follow baseball too much in real life to let all of that go when I watch a movie.

But if I'm looking at it as just a movie, a fictional story with no attachments to real life, it wasn't half bad.  I will complain a little about the lack of time spent on the field.  There was really only one game they showed in any detail.  It was an important game, so I'm glad they did.  I just wish they'd have done it more.  I love baseball movies.  There aren't enough made anymore.  I'm glad for what I can get, but I was a little let down with the lack of pure baseball action going on.

Brad Pitt, as Billy Beane, was pretty good.  I loved him a couple of years ago in Babel, where we played an average husband and father.  I remember thinking that I'd like for him to play more roles like that - an average guy in different circumstances.  He found a role like that here and he did a really good job.  I bought into how much Beane cared about making the team successful.  I could tell he had a real appreciation for the game, which I love to see.  

I will say that my favorite scenes of his, though, were the ones with his on-screen daughter.  Billy is divorced from the mother and they share custody of their 12 year old girl.  He takes her shopping for a guitar, and when she finds one she likes, she sits down and play a few bars, humming along with the melody.  He asks her to sing and she does.  The look on his face when he's watching her is absolutely wonderful.  You can tell that he is completely in awe of her and her talent.  Loved that moment.  But it did hit me after seeing the movie that it was kind of a random scene.  I'm not sure what the point was of having it in there.  Maybe that storyline should have been its own separate story.

Jonah Hill played Pete Brand, the guy who comes up with the theory Beane puts into practice.  Brand becomes Beane's right hand man.  Their dynamic was really special.  There was a lot of sharp and witty dialogue that kept the movie from becoming boring and monotonous.  I could tell that some of the words came from none other than Aaron Sorkin, a favorite writer of mine.  No one can write dialogue like him.

So that's about it.  It's not going to be a favorite movie of mine, but I did enjoy it.  Partially because I was at the Alamo Drafthouse in Winchester, VA.  It's a theater where you can order a meal while you watch a movie.  I met family there because it's almost halfway between us.  We had a great evening.  That's probably what I'll associate with this film the most, a great evening of family, food, and film.

Score:  7/10