ViewGuide

Created Oct 13, 2011 10:27PM PST • Edited Apr 13, 2014 11:44AM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Great 4.0

   Brad Pitt hits a triple with Moneyball and then unexpectedly steals home. His Billy Beane strides through the National Pastime like a corporate buccaneer – smart, swaggering, fun – before receiving a surprising comeuppance from his daughter, a child of divorce. Together the personal and professional sides of the Oakland As general manager – Home & Away in baseball parlance – inform a crisply winning movie.

   Moneyball depicts the game-changing use of statistical analytics to assemble professional sports teams. As if that’s not smart enough, the movie includes plenty of snappy dialog, courtesy of “You can’t handle the truth” screenwriter Aaron Sorkin.

   Its swagger comes from a stellar Pitt performance, and from a generous helping of macho alpha males, courtesy of professional baseball. Into this mix gets thrust Jonah Hill’s endomorphic geek, the kind of guy picked last on the ball-field. His journey to hang with the Major League jocks adds to the movie’s charm.

   The fun comes from several light LOL moments and the fact that the As became record-breaking winners under Billy Beane’s ministrations. No they didn’t win a World Series, but they did break the all-time consecutive wins record, which ain’t exactly chopped liver, and is played extremely well in the movie.

   While Moneyball overplays Billy Beane’s early athletic promise, it deftly uses his winsome daughter to highlight the stakes in his professional gamble and to humanize him, stealing home along the way.

   Box Score: Moneyball is a sure winner for movie fans in general and Brad Pitt fans in particular. For baseball fans, it flirts with perfection. Is there a more complete baseball movie? Statistically unlikely.

4. Acting

   Really Great 4.5

   Brad Pitt swaggers standing still, saying nothing. Cocksure becomes him, especially now that his acting has long since caught up to his Adonis good looks. The camera still loves him, of course. Hell, his mug is more interesting than ever given how his forty-something eyes show the miles.

   We’re used to seeing Jonah Hill as an overbearing fool, so he’s a pleasant surprise as an introspective geek. Note that his Peter Brand is the movie’s one fictional character, swapped in when Paul DePodesta – the real brains behind Beane – decided he didn’t want to be part of the movie.

   Art Howe – the manager of the As – is long and lean. Phillip Seymour Hoffman – who plays him – isn’t. He is however a superior actor who last played Truman Capote for Moneyball director Bennett Miller. Gay Writer to Gruff Jock isn’t too far to travel for one of the best actors working today.

   Half a dozen real baseball scouts create some terrific scenes discussing players. In similar Inside Baseball fashion, professional actor Brent Jennings delivers a perfect rejoinder to one of Billy Beane’s wild-eyed notions. “It’s incredibly hard.” Indeed.

   Kerris Dorsey steals home with Brad the Dad. As Billy Beane’s young daughter, she’s a powerful family voice, whether singing Lenka’s The Show or tenderly challenging Papa Pitt. Safe at home!

5. Male Stars Perfect 5.0

6. Female Stars Great 4.0

   None, but set to not drag down male scores.

7. Female Costars Great 4.0

8. Male Costars Great 4.0

10. Film

    Great 4.0

    The film crackles with repressed energy and sparkles with crisp dialog. However, it falls short of the standard set by The Social Network, another film focused on quantitatively powered professional achievement.

11. Direction Great 4.0

    Bennett Miller should direct more movies, this being only his second feature film. The first? The outstanding Capote.

12. Play Great 4.0

    Michael Lewis has a talent for making high pressure professional situations entertaining, first demonstrated in Liar’s Poker and later in Moneyball, the bestseller on which the movie is based.

    Aaron Sorkin is the master of arch banter in professional settings, as demonstrated most recently in The Social Network. While this script isn’t the home run that one was, it’s at least a stand-up double.

    Steven Zaillian may not be the name brand writer that Sorkin is, but he’s reliable enough to make his name a positive addition to any credits list.

13. Music Really Great 4.5

    Lenka’s The Show is beautifully and heartrendingly sung by Billy Beane’s daughter, the plaintive lyrics speaking to his Big League aspirations and her predicament as the teen daughter of divorced parents. Home run choice.

14. Visuals Great 4.0

    Great to see the Oakland Coliseum, the Bay Bridge and other greater Bay Area locations depicted so well.

15. Content

16. Edge

    Tame 1.4

17. Sex Innocent 1.3

18. Violence Gentle 1.0

19. Rudeness Salty 1.9

21. Reality

    Glib 1.2

    Hollywood movies require that a handsome hero beat the establishment in a single season. Real life Moneyball didn’t play out that way. Its roots predate the season shown in the movie, plus the movie focuses on hitting much more than pitching, let alone fielding. Such oversimplification is necessary for a hit movie, but elides reality.

    Allen Barra’s Wall Street Journal article The ‘Moneyball’ Myth goes into more depth.

22. Circumstantial Glib 1.5

    • Art Howe is apparently a genial sort, not the gruff authoritarian depicted in the movie.
    • The moneyball techniques clearly predated the season depicted in the movie, which falsely suggests they were discovered on the fly solely in that season.
    • Did Billy Beane really have a teen daughter from a broken first marriage? The movie required that she exist, and so there she is.

23. Biological Natural 1.0

24. Physical Natural 1.0