Moneyball is, in a word, perplexing. It has a great cast, a sharp script and a good director. Sadly, it lacks a crucial element that can make or break any movie: a compelling story.
Moneyball tells the true story of the 2001 Oakland Athletics Major League Baseball team. The general manager, Billy Beane (Brad Pitt), has to create a winning baseball team on a shoestring budget. Soon, he is at war with the system, as well as his own staff, when he brings in a hotshot economics buff (Jonah Hill) who thinks he can turn the team around with a new system of team-building that focuses on a matrix of in-game statistics rather than less objective markers such as audience response or game attendance.
The film is filled with great elements. The screenwriters, which include the great Aaron Sorkin (The Social Network, Charlie Wilson's War), have created a script that is both witty and realistic. Whereas most Hollywood productions go for a theatrically colorful script, the dialogue in Moneyball borrows from everyday speech. A lot of credit for the believable dialogue goes to the actors, who all give fine and nuanced performances. Pitt is wonderful as always, and look for a restrained yet entertaining turn from Jonah Hill. In Moneyball, he proves that he is a true actor, and he doesn't have to chew up the scenery in frat-boy style to make us laugh. The director, Bennett Miller (Capote), handles the material with finesse, and turns in a technically well-made film.
Despite all of these positive aspects, I never felt truly engaged with the story - it simply wasn't that interesting. The film is about a different way of looking at baseball, and there's not a lot of drama to be wrung from an economical analysis of the game. It also loses points for being slow-moving, and worse, lacking a good musical score to keep the scenes from getting dull. The movie is more than two hours long, and the music is incredibly soft and unobtrusive. At times there is no background music at all, which can sometimes be used to create tension, but merely results in tedium in this film. Restrained movies can be a nice change of pace, but Moneyball takes restraint and turns it into a film that is low on both excitement and compelling drama. Unfortunately, the film never rises above the constraints of its niche subject.
Moneyball is not a rousing, feel-good sports drama. It is a low-key, meditative look at baseball analysis, and that is not what most people are expecting. If you are a baseball fanatic, then this may be the movie for you. But the average viewer will simply find this to be a well-made, but boring and uninteresting look into a topic that not many people care about.
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