Looking like The Social Network just isn't enough to make a good movie.

Rating: Null/10 (26 September 2011)

The Fat Man does not like baseball. No cheerleaders. Football's my game. For some reason though, I was drawn to Moneyball like a fat moth to a bacon flame. Maybe it's Brad Pitt's massive screen presence and acting ability heh. Or perhaps I really want to like baseball a lot and watching this, Field of Dreams, and Angels in the Outfield will finally bring me in to the fold. However, it's probably fellow fatty Jonah Hill's presence that made me feel welcome at a baseball movie.
Moneyball tried to explain Billy Beane's (Brad Pitt) implementation of sabremetrics to improve the Oakland A's chances for a championship team on a shoestring MLB budget. He's struggling with his lot in life until fictional Peter Brand (fat fatty Jonah Fatness Hill) tells him to use the power of maths and win some games. Things turn around, but in the end, it's just not enough. Season and movie over.
While it's no Miracle  well it's no Miracle. That's the closest comparison I can make. Long shot hockey team wins it all. Long shot baseball team does not win. They go on a record-setting 20 game run, but even the movie tears itself down immediately by pointing out this means nothing. Nobody remembers the A's run except for die-hard A's fans that have no hope. While this is historical, what reading I've done about the real Billy Beane seems pretty far removed from the movie. Why not go full fictional and have them win the World Series? That wouldn't have sat well with a lot of fans, but would have made the movie more interesting. As it stood, the movie was incomplete.
Moneyball covered the beginnings of Beane's use of sabremetrics with the A's, but he's still there, still using the system. He's yet to win a World Series. This is a story – continual failure with a system that should be working correctly, convincing the league that there's merit to this system, and his loyalty to a franchise over money. Moneyball wasn't really a movie about the system either – that could have been pretty interesting for the nerdier types. Instead it used a fictional character to whisper little numbers in Beane's ear instead of crediting him with knowing the system himself. In all, the movie shows just a snippet of something that really does not matter and isn't that interesting. While Hill and Pitt are a great duo, they can't break through the tedious nothingness of the plot.
Great idea, but needed moresomething. Looking like The Social Network just isn't enough to make a good movie.