Movie Review of "Moneyball" with Brad Pitt.

I get invited to a lot of free movie screenings before the movies hit the theaters.   They're always during the week and usually my husband doesn't want to go.  Well I finally drug my husband to one. Last night we saw Moneyball that's coming out this Friday.

My husband is a HUGE baseball fan and so he already knew the story of Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) but I know very little about baseball and had never heard of the guy. Despite that, we both REALLY liked it.

It tells the story of how Beane, a general manager for the Oakland Athletics, couldn't compete in the baseball world because they're a low budget franchise (I forget but $30-40M maybe?) against teams like the Yankees with their $125 budget per year. He met a guy who believed in sabermetrics...a method of quantifying players based on statistics instead of traditional baseball techniques. He decided to try it since he couldn't buy big bucks players so instead looked for "under valued players" and players who got on base often despite other flaws. They did a good job of incorporating the statistical method without making it too complicated of boring.

I'm not a huge Brad Pitt fan, but thought he was great (so did my husband). The other big character was the VERY chubby, VERY nerdy guy he brought in to help him with the statistics and picking players based on it.  Sort of the non-typical baseball guy.   The character is played by Jonah Hill, usually known for comedy, and we both LOVED his character.  I think he played the role perfectly.  There were some other more minor characters played by Robin Wright Penn and Phillip Seymour Hoffman.

Even if you're not a baseball fan or give one hoot about statistics or any of that, it's a great story. Sort of the underdog takes on the world type story. It's rated PG-13 for language, but there's no nudity, sex, drugs, etc. Definitely a good movie for older kids too.

If you see it this weekend, come back and let me know if you enjoyed it!! We give it two thumbs up