Cinema Tuesdays Review

Bernie Mac Swings for the Fence
By Nathan Cone

With Major League Baseball's spring training beginning this week, I sat down to take a look at Bernie Mac's comedy "Mr. 3000," new to DVD. Mac has been great with his supporting roles in films, and on his television sitcom, but "Mr. 3000 is his first starring role in a feature film.

Mac plays Stan Ross, a self-involved slugger who quits the big leagues while his team is in the middle of the pennant race, just after he nabs his 3000th hit, a statistic that should earn him a place in the Baseball Hall of Fame. Flash forward a few years, and we see that Ross has parlayed his "3000 Hits" into his own sports bar, Chinese restaurant, dry cleaning service, and anything else he can stamp his name on. But uh-oh, a technicality reveals Ross only had 2,997 hits, and so the "man with the sweetest swing in the Major League" decides to head back onto the field to get three more hits to ensure his name is enshrined at Cooperstown.

Of course Ross finds the task more difficult than he expected. In 2004, nine years after he retired, it seems the media throws as many curves at Ross as the hot young pitchers he faces at each game. At the same time Ross is on the field trying to get his game back, he is also trying to rekindle a romantic relationship with ESPN reporter Mo Simmons (Angela Bassett). This subplot is handled with not too much credibility, but with some genuine affection. As Ross learns from his past mistakes during his comeback, there are a few scenes that, for a sports comedy, elicit some genuine sentiment. One in particular involves Ross' character as he's sitting at home watching Sports Center. In a surprisingly surreal move for a mainstream film, the television commentators appear in the room with Ross as he reflects on how his career and life isn't turning out the way he hoped.

The baseball action in "Mr. 3000," which takes place in Milwaukee, is filmed well. Real-life players (college and minor leagues) were recruited to be extras in the film. However, for a die-hard Astros fan like myself, seeing "baseball actors" appear in team uniforms was confusing. Every time the Astros appeared on screen, I kept expecting to see Jeff Bagwell, Roy Oswalt, or Carlos Beltran (alas, he's now with the Mets), but instead these strange guys were on the field!

Extra features on the DVD of "Mr. 3000" range from the mildly informative to middling. "Outrageous Outtakes" aren't that funny, and a few deleted scenes offer no new insight into the film. "The Making of Mr. 3000" featurette is just barely a step above a puff piece on the film, and the "Everybody Loves Stan" featurette, where current and former ballplayers talk about "Stan Ross" as if he were a real-life slugger, is a waste of time. The audio commentary by director Charles Stone III is engaging; he has a good speaking voice, and clearly conveys the challenges he faced making this movie (with 10,000 extras in some scenes). The most interesting feature on the disc is the short "Spring Training," which follows several potential extras as the casting directors test their baseball chops.

"Mr. 3000" may not be a baseball film for the ages, like "The Natural," "Bull Durham," or "The Pride of the Yankees," but it is a good movie, elevated by Bernie Mac's natural performance. Mac proves he can carry a film on his own, and while "Mr. 3000" may not knock it out of the park, let's call it a nice ground-rule double.

2/16/05

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