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What it is is the story of Stan, a self-centered ball player for the Milwaukee Brewers who gets his 3000th hit, snatches the ball from a little kid and then promptly retires, despite the fact that his team is in the middle of a pennant race. Stan figures that with 3000 hits, he's a shoo-in for the Hall of Fame, and that's all he cares about. But the bridges that he's burned come back to haunt him. On the day his number is retired, a former teammate toasts him by calling him a great hitter and a terrible person. And the sportswriters who vote for the Hall of Fame make a point of snubbing him year after year. Things get worse when, nine years later, it turns out that three of Stan's hits shouldn't count. Now even his strip-mall empire, with everything named Mr. 3000, is a farce. Unable to stomach the ignominy, he decides to make a come-back, get those three hits and restore his good nickname.

This narrative is tailor-made for jokes about old people trying to get in shape. And we do have the requisite training montage set to the sound of "Y.M.C.A." But the film is much more concerned with Stan's development as a person. He meets an old flame played by Angela Bassett, and he tries to connect with the younger ballplayers, one of whom is a hot-shot that reminds him of himself.

You get the sense from watching Mr. 3000 that the director Charles Stone III and his team of five writers decided early on what the movie *wasn't* going to be. It wasn't going to be The Natural where the fading star comes back to win one last game for the home team. It wasn't going to be Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings, with Mac yucking it up in the Richard Pryor role. And it wasn't going to be the tear-jerker equivalent of Field of Dreams. But when you make a baseball movie without a lot of laughs, without much sentiment, and without any hope of cathartic victory (the Brewers here are struggling to finish in third place), then all you have left are your characters and a quiet, little story.

But Mr. 3000 doesn't have any characters besides Stan. Bassett is stuck with an unfortunate part that requires her to spend way too much time flashing a big smile at Bernie or laughing at his feeble antics. Not that he's trying to be funny, really; he's just trying to get in her pants, and she thinks that's cute. Bassett is a much stronger actor than this, and we can only hope that her next role won't be as a feminine sidekick. Michael Rispoli as Stan's best friend is flatter than flat, a strange choice on the writers' part. Though some of Stan's fellow ballplayers are predictably quirky, it's not like we care what happens to them.

Fortunately, Bernie Mac has charisma to spare. I haven't seen much of his television show, but judging from his stand-up work and this movie, he's the kind of entertainer who could be around a while. He can play the angry black man with a real ferocity, but there's enough of a twinkle around his eyes that white folk don't feel threatened. They feel like they're in on the joke. And when the camera moves in on a close-up of Bernie's pearly whites, the audience can't help but smile along with him. Here's a showman who can, through sheer force of personality, entertain us for a couple hours.

Unfortunately, Mr. 3000 isn't the best vehicle for Bernie's talents, though he does a better job with it than most comics would. He resists the inane mugging and the irritating asides that characterize so many comedians. Furthermore, there's something gratifying about a movie that doesn't build to a huge confrontation or overwhelm us with saccharine sentiment. But still, when a movie marketed as a comedy isn't attempting to be funny, the audience has a right to ask what the movie *is* trying to do. In Mr. 3000's case, that's not exactly clear.   

J. Robert Parks  9/12/2004