MONEYBALL

“MONEYBALL” (Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill & Philip Seymour Hoffman)

Some new morning talk show host here in Seattle told me to go see ‘Moneyball’ because it’s not about baseball – it’s about character building; an ‘inspirational’ story.
So when “Moneyball” came to the discount theatre we went to see it... It’s about BASEBALL – it is ENTIRELY about BASEBALL – no other subject matter is broached other than BASEBALL – It eats, sleeps and dreams BASEBALL. It is an exceptionally boring film about exceptionally boring people and the exceptionally boring game that they play, &/or played...
At my brother’s wedding reception a group of males gathered near the bar (Where, just as in the wild, males are prone to gather) The subject of golf came up. After silently listening for twenty minutes, I finally had to voice my opinion. I said, “I used to think the most boring thing on this planet was watching golf. Now I know there’s something even more boring – people who talk about golf.”
Later, since it was September and the baseball playoffs were approaching, baseball became the main topic. Once again, I let them ramble on and on until a break in the monotony allowed me to interject how I thought the second most boring thing on the planet was baseball – and now I could add ‘people who talk about baseball’ to my most boring things on the planet list.
Why is it that people who play and watch golf and actually pay attention when one of 163,000 baseball games are being played each year are under the opinion that those subjects are suitable for discussion among rational, thinking human beings?
I write this because I don’t want other people to be fooled by a misguided talk
show host that told them ‘Moneyball’ isn’t ABOUT baseball.
Being based on a true story doesn’t automatically make a subject interesting. The thing about sports movies that are based on actual events is that something special takes place at the finale – the underdog overcomes overwhelming odds and wins the championship – but in ‘Moneyball’ nothing like that happens. It’s simply the story of how a failed player turned manager, Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) replaces three stars that signed with other teams by hiring Peter (Jonah Hill) a computer geek to pick his players for him using the complicated system of ‘how often do they get on base?’ – that’s it. That’s the ‘character’ builder here. “We want you on our team because you walk a lot.”
Philip Seymour Hoffman plays Oakland A’s manager Art Howe as a typical baseball manager – totally disinterested in everything that’s going on around him until it starts to threaten his job. It is unquestionably, Hoffman’s worst performance to date.
It’s not really a spoiler to reveal what happens at the end of the season, but all of you Brad Pitt lovers out there that are waiting for the DVD to come out might not know so I won’t say anything except they don’t exactly win the World Series.
For a film that supposedly wasn’t about baseball, there’s a good twenty minutes of the running time devoted to one game when the home team blows an 11-to-nothing lead during the regular season. This ‘highlight’ is as pitiful as Mariner fans that think winning one playoff series is tantamount to winning the MLB championship.
The only interesting aspect came when Beane, unable to coerce manager Howe into playing the guy he wanted him to play at first base, trades the prize rookie Howe has been starting so that he has no choice but to play the ex-catcher at first because he ‘walks a lot’. In any other film that wouldn’t have been all that interesting, but here, it’s the only scene that didn’t utterly bore me.