Moneyball Review,

Before I get to the review we want to say that I LOVE baseball! I am a statistics geek, I know just about everything there is to know about Baseball history and stats. I have been a Atlanta Braves fans since the day I born. Although I have not read the book Moneyball but I know what it is about and how revolutionary it was in changing the game of Baseball with statistics. It is hard to say if you will like the movie if you  don't anything about baseball since I don't have anyone to ask about it. Overall there has not been that many great baseball movies but Moneyball one of the better baseball movie I have seen. And if you are a baseball fan please let us know because I haven't seen many baseball fans on Blogger.

Thoughts: As I said in my post about Baseball yesterday, I love baseball. It is my favorite sport and I watch every Braves game so here is the review for Moneyball. There have been very few great baseball movies. Almost every baseball movie leaves out some things that hardcore fans like me believe are important. Since baseball is such a complex game it is hard to fit everything into one movie without fans complaining. The best baseball movie is Field of the Dreams, since it is more of a fantasy movie than just a baseball movie it really worked. Moneyball takes a different approach, it focuses on the Front Office more than the actually game it's self, which worked for the most part. Many people complained that it was too long of a movie but I thought that it was not long enough since it did not cover every aspect of the game. There was an unnecessary sub plot that distracted from the Baseball part of the movie, which could have been cut out to make time for the baseball parts. There were a lot references that only baseball fans, who know a lot about statistics would notice. Moneyball has gotten a lot of positive reviews and even people who do not like said that they enjoyed the movie. It was even nominated for best picture at the Oscars.


Directed by: Bennett Miller
Genre: Sports, Baseball, Drama,
Release Date: September 23, 2011 (2011-09-23)
Running Time: 133 minutes
MMPA rating: PG-13


The Good: Excellent acting, Interesting look at behind the scenes of the baseball front office, Had a few funny moments, Different from other baseball movies,

The Bad: Not enough focus on the pitching part of baseball, Unnecessary sub plot that distracted from the Baseball part,




Plot: The following plot summery is copied from Wikipedia.com.
Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) is upset by his team's loss to the New York Yankees in the 2001 postseason. With the impending departure of star players Johnny Damon, Jason Giambi, and Jason Isringhausen to free agency, Beane attempts to devise a strategy for assembling a competitive team for 2002 but struggles to overcome Oakland's limited player payroll. During a visit to the Cleveland Indians, Beane meets Peter Brand (Jonah Hill), a young Yale economics graduate with radical ideas about how to assess players' value. Beane tests Brand's theory by asking whether he would have drafted him (out of high school), Beane having been a Major League player before becoming general manager. Though scouts considered Beane a phenomenal player, his career in the Major Leagues was disappointing. After some prodding, Brand admits that he would not have drafted him until the ninth round and that Beane should probably have accepted a scholarship to Stanford instead. Sensing opportunity, Beane hires Brand as the Athletics' assistant general manager.
The team's scouts are first dismissive of and then hostile towards Brand's non-traditional sabermetric approach to scouting players, most notably Grady Fuson (Ken Medlock) – who is fired by Beane after insulting their approach, and takes to the radio airwaves and doubts the team's future. Rather than relying on the scouts' experience and intuition, Brand selects players based almost exclusively on their on base percentage (OBP). By finding players with a high OBP but characteristics that lead scouts to dismiss them, Brand assembles a team of undervalued players with far more potential than the A's hamstrung finances would otherwise allow. Despite vehement objections from the scouts, Beane supports Brand's theory and hires the players he selected, such as unorthodox submarine pitcher Chad Bradford (Casey Bond). Following the free agent signings, Beane finds that he also faces opposition from Art Howe (Philip Seymour Hoffman), the Athletics' manager. With tensions already high between them because of a contract dispute, Howe disregards Beane and Brand's strategy and plays the team in a traditional style despite their unsuitability. Beane is eventually forced to trade away the lone traditional star player (Carlos Peña) to force Howe to use the new recruits. Watch the movie to see what happens next.



Plot: 8.0/10- Moneyball was well written but the sub plot distracted from the baseball aspect of the movie.





Action: N/A



Acting: 8.7/10- Brad Pitt's performance was top notch and Stephen Bishop as David Justice was very similar in his mannerisms to that of the real player David Justice.



Special effects: N/A



Soundtrack: 6.2/10- The soundtrack was not great but not bad.





Comedy: 7.7/10- There were a few very funny moments in the movie.





Would I Watch This Again: I would probably watch this again some years from now.



Overall: 8.0/10- Overall Moneyball is a very good movie with great performances.




Closing comments: Moneyball is a great movie if you like Baseball but since I do not know anyone that has seen the movie and does not know anything about baseball, it is hard to say if you will it.


Click here to check out more of our movie reviews.

If you want to contact us or have any question please send an e-mail to johnstarslayer@gmail.com.