Now Playing: "Moneyball" (2011)

I hate going to the movies on opening night, I can’t deal with the crowds. But I decided to change my ways and actually watch a movie in the big screen. I went along with @septicor, a fellow reader, to watch “Moneyball”. I’ve not read the book with the same name by Michael Lewis, but as a baseball fan and a bit of a numbers nerd this movie was something I could not pass on. The movie is loosely based on the true story of the 2002 Oakland Athletics. All the dug out dirt after the jump.

The movie centralizes on the rebuilding season for the Oakland Athletics in the year 2002. The previous year the A’s lost to the Yankees in the American League Division Series. And the following offseason lost three of their biggest players. The A’s GM Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) needed to scout out players to replace the ones he lost. He decided to use the unusual tactic of statistics sabermetric approach to pick out players that were undervalued. Because at the time the A’s were the 6th lowest income team at just under $41 Million, whereas the NY Yankees, the top income team was making a shy over $125 Million. With the help of fictional character Peter Brand (Jonah Hill), they set off. The new tactic is largely frowned upon amongst the baseball community. Watch as the two prove all of MLB wrong and surprise even the wisest of analysts. 

Brad Pitt is great like usual.

I went into this movie hoping it was more of a straight forwards math game; instead I was given a diluted biography with an emphasis on making the movie dramatically entertaining. Now this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, just a bit disappointed. And I suppose I can live with the movie having a couple adjustment of the real story to make the movie easier to be enjoyed by the general public.  Just a small example being that Peter Brand was a hybrid character of two real life people; Paul DePodesta and J. P. Ricciardi. And the point that the film only showed a couple years of progression, which in matter of fact took nearly a decade to develop such system.  But again, this was all done for entertainment.

But let me bring it back to Peter Brand. I don’t care for Jonah Hill; he has always been that type cast actor in my eyes since forever. But this movie, he seems to break away from his typical role. Not only was he a great at being this Peter Brand, but his chemistry with Pitt was flawless. The two characters are essentially opposite to one another. This was my favourite part of the movie; both Pitt and Hill were great to watch on screen and brought me a lot of laughs and enjoyment.

Jonah Hill was a pleasant surprise to watch.

Now my biggest complaint is the fact that it was not enough baseball and too much drama. There is a small side plot with Beane and his daughter, which I thought could have been left out and would have preferred that. My last complaint is a very small one and won’t go noticed by most people. When I watched the A’s 20th consecutive win during the 2002 season, it was an important time in my life. An underdog team winning 20 games straight? A feat never dreamt about or even reached in over 50 years. And it seemed that the movie just skimped on that last game, as if it wasn’t that important.

I would never say this movie was a bad movie. I just think that the general public, this includes me, will like the movie. It is a good sports movie that has a lot of drama in it. The nerdy numbers game is kept at a low, and there isn’t much baseball jargon being tossed around. Most baseball fans, again I consider myself this, will enjoy this. It’s a baseball movie that is fairly entertaining with some good nostalgia moments. But to hard-core baseball fans, I think most of them might be slightly disappointed to how far of a tangent this movie takes compared to the book. I liked this movie as a fun baseball movie with a few neat real life facts.