Moneyball (The Film Debate!)

Rating: Null/10 (4 November 2011)

THE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE: Full Disclosure: I read the book and I'm a fan of Michael Lewis' work (who isn't these days?). I enjoyed it, though I will say a lot of that probably came from curiosity of how they can take that book and make it a movie. How do you show the power of an idea when the main characters don't reach their goal? (In this case, a championship or even a trip the the World Series). The answer: hyping up a record win streak in the middle of the season the kind of meaningless stat that Moneyball adherents would dismiss as irrelevant and flukey. The highlight for me was the dramatic, slow-mo, "The Natural"-esque shots of baseball players taking walks. It was the perfect metaphor for what Moneyball is all about.
THE PROFESSIONAL: Moneyball is one of my favorite books, and yet the movie version wouldn't be included in my Top 100 favorite movies. When I heard that they were going to make a movie greenlit soon after the success of The Blind Side I was worried. The people bankrolling the movie had to be looking for some sort of saccharine, tear-jerker human interest angle the likes of which made The Blind Side so popular. Indeed, you had a rather lame subplot about Billy Beane's daughter and far too many shots of Billy (Brad Pitt) staring off soulfully into the distance. Trim the movie by 10-15 minutes and it would be stronger. Read the book!
THE FUGITIVE: Wow, double whammy slam-ball. "Moneyball" wasn't THAT bad. I was thoroughly interested throughout the whole movie. It is a movie about a modern real-life baseball team; not about a bunch of neighborhood kids playing backyard ball, or about some magical bat, or some magical field, or even one baseball player trying for one last hurrah. It is a movie about baseball behind-the-scenes, with the main character not even being a player, but the general manager. It does have some emotional and perhaps over-the-top subplots or transitional scenes, like Brad Pitt sitting in his truck and looking off into the distance of an empty lot. It was not as statemental or "epic" as "The Social Network," not analyzing our modern web 2.0 society mixed with traditional back-stabbing, but similarly a "real-life" (with artistic licenses of course) modern story about doing something different in a world set in traditional ways. I didn't read the book, and I haven't even watched "The Blind Side," so maybe you will like "Moneyball" too if not jaded by book-is-always-better or going in hoping for a Brad-Pitt better than Sandra Bullock experience.