A Ploddy, Unenthusiastic Look at an Amazing Story

Rating: 5/10 (2 January 2012)

With the hype surrounding Brad Pitt's newest offering, I took it upon myself to venture down to the cinema to take in "Moneyball". What drew me in wasn't the story - I know very little about baseball - but a cast including the amazing Philip Seymour Hoffman and Jonah Hill in a serious dramatic role. It had a lot to live up to.
Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane (Pitt) is desperate to have his team make it to the top when young Peter Brand (Hill) offers an innovative system of hiring (and firing) members of the team based on their individual skill instead of overall talent. Beane sees something that could re-define the game and implements his and Brand's idea, to the chagrin of the A's manager Art Howe (Hoffman) and the rest of the scouting team.
"Moneyball" is the second outing by who I considered to be one of the very best in the business, Bennett Miller. Miller gave us Philip Seymour Hoffman's finest (so far) performance in a similar historical film, Capote, which also looks at a flawed man and how his actions affected history. But that's where the similarities end. "Moneyball" is a ploddy, angsty look at something that could really make an amazing film. Ultimately, it falls flat.
All too often, I would catch myself interested in the upholstery of my chair or the size of the screen instead of what the characters were talking about on screen. It's rare that the film offers any analysis of why certain members of Beane's team were good. Instead, the audience is just told that they're good. That's that. I bet I would have loved this film if I knew who the ball players Pitt and Hill spend so much time talking about were. There's no explanation. I'm just expected to know who was a great player on the Oakland A's that particular year.
I'm giving Bennett Miller's film five stars because of exactly that: Bennett Miller. I could tell that he was genuinely interested in Capote, but for most of Moneyball I was wondering if I was more interested than he or Pitt or any of the others were. The strongest performance comes from Jonah Hill, who effectively plays a very boring person. I belived that he was boring enough to come up with this system, and boring enough to not really care how everything turned out. Hoffman sleepwalks through a ten minute performance and about one line for every scene he's in.
One very bright spot: Arliss Howard plays the manager of the Boston Red Sox and has a brilliant scene with Brad Pitt at the press box of Fenway Park. Howard effortlessly plays a very small role with unparallel grace. One of my rewarded starts is solely his.
You're reading a review coming from someone who doesn't actively follow baseball, but likes a good sports film. I didn't find Moneyball to be a bad sports film, yet I can't say it kept my interest long enough to prevent me from dozing off by the seventh inning.