No jock schmaltzfest like “Field of Dreams,” the whip-smart “Moneyball” is a crowd-pleasing baseball movie for people — like me — who don’t like baseball movies. They can’t stop Beane, but he hits a major roadblock with his surly manager Art Howe — wonderfully played by Philip Seymour Hoffman (who Bennett directed to a Best Actor Oscar in Bennett’s only other film, “Capote”) in a few strategic scenes. People like Scott Hatteberg ( Chris Pratt ), a catcher whose overall baseball abilities Beane valued so much that he changed him into a first baseman because Hatteberg could no longer throw well enough to be behind the plate. ""Moneyball" is also a surprise success because this has been a famously troubled production, one on which Sony pulled the plug just before shooting was to begin despite having Steven Soderbergh set to direct from a script by Steven Zaillian.
– Moneyball is a big hit with critics, even if its premise—a film about baseball statistics—might sound boring at first. Here’s what they say about the film, which stars Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill: Built on a "sharp, sleek script," Moneyball "takes all this seemingly dry, dusty, inside-baseball stuff and turns it into the kind of all-too-rare pleasurable Hollywood diversion that gives you a contact high," writes Manohla Dargis in the New York Times. "No jock schmaltzfest, the whip-smart Moneyball is a crowd-pleasing baseball movie for people—like me—who don’t like baseball movies," writes Lou Lumenick in the New York Post. In the Los Angeles Times, Kenneth Turan agrees, calling it "that rare sports movie that doesn't end with a rousing last-second victory or a come-from-behind celebration." Pitt is "in top movie star form," he adds. In short, it’s "one of the best and most viscerally exciting films of the year," asserts Peter Travers in Rolling Stone.