By Jamie Monroe

Maybe the easiest way to describe a movie like Moneyball is, first, to describe what it is not.

Moneyball is, obviously, a movie about baseball.

However, it’s a different kind of movie about baseball, because it doesn’t fit the mold of the standard feel-good sports movie.

While there are plenty of feel-good, stick it to the system moments, this is no Cinderella story, no underdog team that comes up from behind to sweep the season.

There’s no Queen at the end blaring We Are the Champions, no slow-motion trophy waving scene that ends on a triumphant freeze-frame.

But I think that’s what I liked best about this movie.

Moneyball is based on the 2003 novel by Michael Lewis, Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game. 

The story follows the 2002 season of the Oakland Athletics, under the management of Billy Beane (Brad Pitt).

After the A’s are eliminated in the first round of the 2001 playoffs and the team’s best players scalped by teams with bigger bankrolls, Beane decides to take a different approach to baseball: a new concept called moneyball.

Rather than attempt to replace his big-name players with one of the smallest payrolls in baseball, he hires Peter Brand (Jonah Hill) a consultant who uses his Yale economics degree to crunch the most minute baseball stats.

The idea is that by using statistics and complex formulas, Beane can recruit players that are (theoretically) just as valuable to his team as big-name free agents.

But because they are overlooked by other teams, he can actually afford them.

The end result?

Beane recruits a rag tag bunch of players for the 2002 season.

Among them: a pitcher that throws funny, a first baseman with nerve damage in his elbow who can’t throw a ball and a batter pushing 40, close to aging out of the Major League Baseball system entirely.

Beane is considered crazy by most of the MLB, and out of the gate, his team performs dismally.

His own scouts and managers aren’t behind him; The A’s Manager, Art Howe (Philip Seymour Hoffman) stalwartly refuses to play the team following Beane’s methods until Beane starts trading away players and leaves him with no other choice.

Once the team starts playing on the field the way it’s been designed to play on paper, the season turns around.

Brad Pitt carries most of the film, sometimes without saying anything at all.

There are several scenes of him anxiously watching his team play on a tiny TV screen, or anxiously listening on his truck radio, or just generally being anxious.

While watching a brooding Brad Pitt isn’t painful by any means, he really shines when he’s acting with other people.

He portrays Beane as a savvy, slightly arrogant, quick-witted manager with a likable swagger.

Jonah Hill, while not in his normal comedic roles, has fantastic timing, and also accounts for some of the film’s funniest moments and best lines.

The pair, while unlikely, have great chemistry and are enjoyable to watch.

Philip Seymour Hoffman is usually great in anything he does, and here takes on the role of the film’s old-school sometimes-villian as Manager Art Howe admirably.

The pacing of the film is easy, edging on slow.

Subplots about Beane’s failed professional baseball career, divorce and his sincere worries that he might lose his job keep a sort of melancholy drizzle over the film.

There are plenty of sweet moments, like the scene where one of the players, considered by the rest of baseball to be “defective,” sincerely thanks Beane for giving him another shot.

And of course, the original footage of the A’s record-shattering 20 game winning streak provides that thrill of victory for the audience to share- maybe even more rewarding, because those moments are real.

Ultimately, though, the film doesn’t rewrite history.

The A’s didn’t win the World Series in 2002, but that’s not what this movie is about.

 Moneyball is a story about a team that changed the way the game of baseball is played- not just on the field, but in the clubhouses as well.

While there’s a lot for baseball fans to enjoy, there’s a strong enough story that everyone else can enjoy it, too.