Review of the movie ‘Moneyball’ with Brad Pitt
It’s like Hollywood has heard all of my inner silent screams, begging them to STOP already with aliens, superheroes, and lack of thought in general. Give me something smart and real, something that makes me feel like I didn’t just set that $10 bill on fire and sit in a dark room for 90 minutes. Well hello ‘Moneyball’—-you have given me hope.
THE GOOD: Let’s get one thing straight, up front: I don’t like baseball. I went to a Colorado Rockies pro game years ago; I forgot a long time ago who they were playing and probably didn’t even realize it at the time, and the only thing I enjoyed was how cute it was. of the players was. Going even further, I don’t understand the whole “sports fan” mentality of ANY sport. Women who lose their husbands to a giant TV screen for months on end, men who absolutely HURT when a guy in black and white stripes has the audacity to point the field at what is CLEARLY in the wrong direction. The obscenely overpaid athletes who seem hell-bent on self-destructing before our eyes. And don’t get me started on the whole face and body painting thing. Or giant cheese hats. So you can understand that I had my reservations about this movie and frankly at 10 minutes I found myself thinking, “Well at least Brad Pitt is cute and he will serve as a focal point for me to get through this.” . So knowing my complete lack of interest in the sport, imagine my surprise when I found myself ENJOYING watching baseball. If you don’t know the premise of the story, this is a semi-biographical story of Billy Beane (Brad Pitt doing the honors), General Manager of the Oakland Athletics, and his effort to put together a winning team with very little funding, based on a computer-based analysis of the statistics. With the help of Ivy League graduate Peter Brand (played wonderfully by Jonah Hill), they begin to sign players who have been labeled flawed by “experts” but have the potential to make a winning team. The dialogue is surprisingly “unscripted”. And seeing the process of building this new baseball club leaves you hopeful that it will work. It’s a smart movie, with moments of humor that are so real you feel like part of the crew, not a member of the audience. Brad Pitt has become an amazing actor and the timing of him in this movie is perfect. He is easy on the eyes too. There is definitely that.
THE BAD: The movie gets off to a slow start, so I worried from the start that Brad would have to run the whole thing on the merits of his looks alone. Perhaps the director was trying to establish Billy Beane’s heartbreak after another in a long list of losses. He at least got the heartbreaking part right. He recovers quickly after that, so hang in there. There’s also a side story of Billy’s ex-wife (Robin Wright) and his daughter (Kerris Dorsey) that might have been nice if fleshed out a bit more; It’s never really clear what went wrong, but whatever it was, it obviously ended. up with all his money. And a dumb new husband. Probably the weirdest part of the story, though, was when Billy was getting ready to take his 12-year-old daughter on a plane back with mom after a visit with him. The girl expresses her concern for her father’s career and future, and in an effort to distract her, he offers something along the lines of “Why are you so worried about me? You should be more worried about that plane.” you’re getting on, those things collide, you know? Giant epic breeding fails. I think it was meant to be funny, but as a father, and someone who is deathly afraid of flying, I couldn’t imagine saying something that stupid to his son. But what do I know? I think giant foam fingers are dumb too.
THE UGLY: Apparently, it is fundamentally necessary to SPIT as a baseball player. No one knows exactly why, but the game isn’t worth playing if these men don’t have a giant ball of something on their lower lip. Can you imagine if all sports had this unwritten requirement? Sunflower shells all over the tennis courts, big piles of chews littering the pool. It would be total chaos. And gross. Don’t forget the gross.
So don’t get me wrong: I still don’t like baseball and I’ll always be grateful to have a husband who does NOT park his butt on the couch to watch the playoffs, you’re welcome. But whether you’re a sports fan or not, this movie will make you feel like your money’s worth. It is a statistical certainty.
The Trophy Wife gives you 4 ½ trophies.
Moneyball is 133 minutes long and is rated PG 13 for strong language. (F word used twice)