Winning on the Cheap

Rating: 7/10 (13 January 2012)

This is a fun movie provided you like sports and/or baseball – and a basic knowledge of baseball will add to the enjoyment. Its' more about the management and business side, than about the game – buts its' also about winning and how to win – in this case on a spartan budget. Baseball is more of a statistical game than others – there are numbers all over the place – innings, strikeouts, walks, hitting averages, on- base averages
So it starts with general manager Billy Beane (played by Brad Pitt) getting a "Google-boy" (played by Jonah Hill) to give him masses of statistics on players from other teams with the all-important dollar value (current player salary) in one of the columns. Using the data from these spreadsheets, along with the significant dollar column, Billy Beane wheels and deals. A dream team is built on the cheap.
It's all pleasurable and funny with tantrums, business meetings with old baseball codgers eyeing Google-boy most suspiciously, and the recruitment and abrupt dismissal of players. I felt Philip Seymour Hoffman under-used (but did he ever look like a baseball coach!!) There was even some syrupy stuff of Billy and his daughter which kind of worked – this was probably tossed in to distract away from the predominant male element in this film.
For a 2 hour plus movie Moneyball plays well and entertains.