'Moneyball' A Disappointment

I don’t know about your brother’s girlfriend, but I took my wife (who would rather do anything in the world besides watch a baseball game) and she said she really liked it.

Personally, I think it’s difficult any time you read the book first and then go watch the movie. Chronicles of Narnia were my favorite books as a kid; my children love the movies — I think they are the worst things ever made. Movies are rarely going to be able to translate all of the thoughts, tension and emotions of a book.

Aaron Sorkin is just a fabulous writer of dialogue, and that came out in the movie.

I do agree with you that there were … loose ends? … maybe “extraneous scenes” is the better phrase. What was the point of Bradford offering to pray for Billy when nothing else in the movie suggests Beane has an opinion one way or another about religion? And, while the daughter helped get the movie away from baseball for a few moments (for people like my wife), she did almost nothing to advance the plot. Jonah Keri suggests that Mark Shapiro doesn’t pay attention to his ideas, but they put a long scene in the beginning in which Shapiro looks like he won’t wipe his own ass without Keri telling him “OK”.

My only other pet peeve was that Jonah Keri was pretty terrible in this flick. It’s one thing for him to portray the character as a good ’ole fashioned nerd. But they also portrayed him as weak willed wimp, too.

Huh…maybe I didn’t like the film after all. I think my positive opinion of it is basically because I could watch a movie about the phone book if Sorkin wrote the script. The guy is a damn good writer.

“Just like Chicago baseball: Anticipating the best, and not surprised when nothing happens.”

Scroll down & click on the link that says "Moneyball – it’s the first review.

I don’t plan to see it, so I’m not one to comment on the film itself.

I thought that Moneyball might be bad when I noticed that Roger Ebert gave it four stars. Usually when he gives a movie four stars, that tells me that it might appeal to really old boring guys, but probably not to me.

It’s not horrible, but it’s not great either. I would say it’s a pretty average movie. Could have done without the scenes with his daughter, his ex and her new guy. Also the end where the movie tells us that the Red Sox won the 2004 World Series using Beane’s methods was silly. Last I checked, the 2004 Red Sox had the 2nd highest payroll in baseball. If any World Series winning team was like the 2002 Oakland Athletics, it was the 2003 Florida Marlins.

Although I did get some chills watching Hatteberg walk up to the plate, it was kind of fun knowing what was going to happen at that point.

It was factual enough for me to be entertaining. Is Billy Beane’s daughter Lenka? Has Nike+ secretly been around for years? Does it really matter who didn’t slide when Jeter made that idiotic flip play?
Whenever one reads an article, watches a show or movie about a subject they know, about which they are passionate about, the errors stand out. But maybe we miss the forest from the trees? For example, The King’s Speech, I knew nothing about the subject matter, but really enjoyed the movie. However, to many (and rightly so) it is filled with ridiculousness and what should be gamebreaking flaws.
The main thrust of Moneyball is a charismatic, but flawed, character standing up to entrenched, stoneheaded and very flawed thinking. It’s a story about taking a chance on probability and statistics. And yet Beane is also portrayed as intensely superstitious. He is building a house upon numbers, and yet will not watch a game because he feels (as many of us do, no matter how rational), that we someone can impact the outcome of a game based on what we do.
Baseball is religion, and it will always be a loose end.