Moneyball Review- By Michael Carlisle

Title: Moneyball

Year: 2011
Country: U.S
Language: English

Going into this baseball underdog film I had two thoughts in mind: A) This film is going to be an innovative sports film that will renew my faith that not all underdog films are the same or B) This film is going to be the exact same baseball underdog movie that I’ve seen one hundred times over. After I watched Moneyball  I concluded that it was the exact same Baseball underdog film that I’ve seen one hundred times over with a few exceptions. The acting was good, the humour was well used and the serious scenes were not at all cheesy. Therefore this underdog sports film is better than Benchwarmers, Bad News Bears and Underdog: A Dodgeball Story but failed in comparison to Field of Dreams, though currently I’m not sure if Field of Dreams was an underdog story as the only thing I remember is the quote  “If you build it, they will come”.

Moneyball begins by trying to tell us a deep and dark secret about baseball that we all already knew already. No it’s not that some of the star players are on steroids, that would be too obvious. It’s that Baseball is run on money. Money is what makes the world go round, money is what baseball goes around. If you don’t have money you can’t get the star players, if you can’t get the star players then you have to settle for poorer players. If you settle for the poorer players you most likely won’t win the World Series. Well duh. Please tell me something useful. Please assume that I haven’t been living in a while in the ground for the decade. Baseball is run by money. Brilliant.

The film centers on Oakland Athletic’s manager  Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) who used to be a MLB star but couldn’t make the cut anymore. He became manager and was fuled over his hatred of losing. Sound like the typical baseball movie manager? Yeah, I thought so too. He also is a lonely man who is recovering from a failed and doesn’t have the best relationship with his daughter. He faces incredible criticism from the everybody even remotely in charge of his team. There is great pressure on his shoulders. His job is on the line but he knows of a way to win. Yes, he still sounds like the typical coach/manager of an underdog baseball team but surprisingly Pitt’s acting saves this character. He makes us feel sympathy and get us to root for him. Pitt’s acting in this film is probably the only good quality of this film.

Billy Beane’s secret tactic to winning is Peter Brand (Jonah Hill), a nerdy fella who can crunch numbers like a pro and therefore obtain a cost efficient way to analyze baseball players and win games. The film is about business and numbers. It is about abandoning tradition in favour of numerical analysis. To win they must go against many centuries of baseball tradition. Human calculation is supposed to win more games than human instinct. This is supposed to be a brave film about abandoning tradition yet it is a traditional sports film. It is a film that does not criticize the idea that “winning isn’t everything”. Infact in Moneyball winning is everything. Everyone is hell-bent on winning. People do not matter in this film, people are pawns in a numerical system. This is the kind of thing Chaplin warned us about in Modern Times and The Great Dictator. Why are we celebrating a film that celebrates human detachment and human ambition? Why do we people think this film says anything intelligent at all? Does anybody even watch baseball anymore?

In conclusion. Moneyball is a well acted clone of every other underdog sports film, except that this may have worse morals. Is baseball that important anymore anyways?  Regardless of the answer, I still feel that I have wasted my time watching the film AND reviewing the film. Although at least if people read my review I can save them from two hours of something they probably already saw when they were five. Piss on it! 1/5

Next 5 Reviews:
1. Ides of March- 2011
2. Midnight in Paris- 2011
3. The Hunger Games- 2012
4. 50/50- 2011
5. Inception- 2010