| Reviewer Roundup |
| 1. |
 | Harvey Karten |
| review follows |
|  |
| 2. |
| Dustin Putman |
| read the review |
|  |
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Review by Harvey Karten
2 stars out of 4
Expect critics and movie fans alike to have a field day with
metaphors for Charles Stone III's "Mr. 3000," ranging from "a
major league story that stays in the minors," "a foul ball," "strikes
out," "take a walk Bernie Mac," "hits a homer," "deserves to be in
the Hall of Fame (or Shame)." While Bernie Mac is a fine
comedian who is asked here to play a role in a baseball drama,
a pedestrian script, a look at major league ball players as a pot
pourri of stereotypes, the existence of only a single likable
character (who delivers the movie's nicest lines while serving
behind a bar) "Mr. 3000" is not only a lame story but one which
has its lead performer engage in actions in the last of the ninth
that would never have been allowed by a coach.
Bernie Mac inhabits the role of Stan Ross, who has 3,000 hits
to his career. He's such an egomaniac and first-class jerk that
frightened kid and his disgusted papa and betrays the team by
quitting right in the middle of the season. For reasons unknown,
however, he fails to be elected to baseball's Hall of Fame in
Cooperstown, New York, a defeat that Stan simply cannot live
down years after he quit the game. When some bean counters
discover a miscount (think "Open Water"), that Stan really made
only 2,997 hits in his career, he's crushed–so badly that he is
determined at the age of forty-seven, after a nine-year recess, to
re-join the team.
The big plot hole: If Stan is unable to gain election to the Hall
of Fame after his alleged 3,000th hit years back, what makes
him think he would be considered now? Other plot holes turn
up in the last of the ninth when Stan, the last hitter in the lineup,
gets his final chance to hit 3,000. What he does boggles the
mind. No coach would have recommended the chosen
strategy.
We're giving nothing away, really, when we say that this is the
story of a young man's metamorphosis from one who is full of
himself, whose team spirit is practically zilch in his struggle to be
prized for individual achievement, but who at a later age grows
up and is willing to make sacrifices for the good of the group.
For the obligatory love interest, there's a lame story of Stan's
romantic renewal with Mo (Angela Bassett), a reporter for ESPN
who knows she will soon be pushed aside for someone younger
and fights her feelings for Stan, whom she considers a
womanizer. Bernie Mac is appropriately cast as a morose
egomaniac but the story, which portrays everyone except the
bartender as a cynic or a jerk, militates against its feel-good
conclusion.
Copyright © 2004 Harvey Karten
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out of 4
