95% Moneyball

A's general manager Billy Beane uses a unique statistical analysis to put together a playoff-caliber team out of discarded players.Aaron Sorkin's scripts often have specialized, industry-specific, high-energy dialogue; many times we don't know what the characters are talking about, but we're caught up in their mannerisms, and we can figure out enough. In theory, he's the perfect writer to turn a "revolutionary" baseball theory into a movie, but what's disappointing about Moneyball is the lack of Sorkin-isms. There are a few great scenes in which Beane barks, "Get Dombrowski on the phone" without any winks at the audience or any footnotes reading, "He means Dave Dombrowski of the Tigers." Beane's trading of Giambi was a good scene of subtle rejection, and the song his daughter sings to him, adapted from Lenka's "The Show," which was actually produced six years after the film's events took place, has stayed in my head for the last month.But the Sorkin energy is missing. We don't need scenes of Beane sniffing coke off a woman's bare stomach a la The Social Network, but Beane and Peter Brand's relationship develops so slowly. More importantly, Phillip Seymour Hoffman is woefully under-used as Art Howe, who is relegated to looking perplexed at Beane's behavior and stolid most other times.What is more, I'm not sure what the center - the focus - of the film is. Is Moneyball about a renegade GM? Is Beane a hero, a loser, or both? Should the audience focus on the technicalities of Moneyball, the theory? Whereas The West Wing highlighted those backroom deals we hope aren't really part of democracy and The Social Network presented us with the theory that what we think of as social is actually anti-social, Moneyball doesn't have that thematic backbone.Overall, there's a lot to like about Moneyball, but the film is ultimately frustrating because it could have been so much more.

October 17, 2011

Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/moneyball/

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