Steve Pulaski
People always ask me why I can't see movies as just entertainment and why I feel the need to place everyone under examination, like I'm trying to magnify every little aspect. Why can't I just enjoy the movie? They misrepresent me and forget when I review a film, I'm putting down my thoughts and this is my opinion; I try and extend mine past simple, fragmented remarks. I'm using this as the introduction to my review of Charles Stone III's Mr. 3000 because I can see every point at which I'm about to make being refuted with the statement, "it's entertaining, who cares?" This is where the average moviegoer and myself see ourselves at odds.Mr. 3000 will be found entertaining by baseball fans, fans of sports films, and those looking for light-hearted comedy that can't be burdened to think much. There is nothing wrong with that at all. It concerns Stan Ross, an unbelievably arrogant, self-centered baseball player who gets his three-thousandth hit right at the beginning of the film. He is so arrogant and self-centered that he goes into the crowd and snatches the ball from a kid's hand. In the locker-room after the game, giving a post-game interview, Ross announces that he will quit mid-season, leaving his team hanging. He got three-thousand hits; what more does he have to do? Nine years later, however, an error is discovered after Ross is about to be entered into the Baseball Hall of Fame, leaving him with two-thousand nine hundred and seven hits and not three-thousand. He decides that even at forty-seven, he should return to his old team - the Milwaukee Brewers, who are now struggling in fifth place - and hit the ball three more times to be an official member of the three-thousand club.Stan Ross is played by Bernie Mac, an actor who oozes likability and wry humor when he needs to. Because of this, seeing him play a cantankerous, unnecessarily arrogant ballplayer is disheartening, and this persona becomes such a drag that by the time the inevitable plot-points ring true and we're left with a corny ending, we still couldn't bother to side with this man - at least I couldn't. When we focus on a character who has been disrespectful and disgustingly narcissistic for more than half of the film and at the end the film makes us try and side with him, as he slowly begins to realize the pain and lonesomeness that comes with being so brazenly self-indulgent, I can't be bothered to have sympathy for the man. Narcissism is single-handedly the trait in people I despise the most, and even when Ross is clearly being sincere near the end, I saw nothing but smarmy behavior and false kindness in him.It's no secret that baseball players can be the most self-indulgent athletes around. I frequently attend minor league games and see stuck-up attitudes abound - and that's a single-A division. There is indisputable truth to the Stan Ross character in baseball circles, but do people really want to watch a film about a sickeningly arrogant ballplayer? Considering Mr. 3000's lukewarm box office receipts, I'm guessing not entirely.Besides its irredeemable character and the predictable sentimentality that endures, Mr. 3000 is a perfectly watchable film. For one, it features some of the slickest editing I've seen in a baseball picture, especially during the scenes on the diamond, which become briskly paced and somewhat tense when Ross is up to bat. Not to mention, Paul Sorvino gets a bold moment to shine, and the scene when the players are talking about the "sounds" of baseball from years past is wholesome and kindly nostalgic. Now if only the film's title character could possess traits closer to the latter than the ones he holds onto now, which are nearly stomach-turning.Starring: Bernie Mac, Angela Bassett, and Paul Sorvino. Directed by: Charles Stone III.
richard-1787
At the risk of being obvious by starting with a baseball metaphor, this movie blew me out of the park - which I wasn't expecting. When I came here to review it, I was almost equally surprised by how low the overall rating given by reviewers is.I ordered this movie because I saw that it dealt with an older man trying to go back and do physically demanding things he had been able to do years before. Being 60 myself, that's an issue I can relate to, and I wanted to see how it was handled. I figured the situation would be played for broad laughs - the old geezer puffing and panting because he's out of shape. In other words, I expected some easy laughs, but nothing more.I was VERY wrong. This movie comes close to batting 1000 for several reasons.First, this script is no throw-away piece of easy comedy writing. There is no simple, clichéd arch: Stan is obnoxious, Stan is made to look foolish, Stan learns his lesson and becomes a wonderful human being. Yes, Stan starts to learn what he looked like to others, not with some TV sitcom big group hug, but by seeing the young star of the Brewers act too much as he did in his prime. And yes he gets humiliated, painfully, over and over again, especially by the particularly cruel sports commentators on TV. But if he starts to change because of all this, he backtracks and goes back to being the obnoxious old Stan on more than one occasion. He does finally learn humility, but it doesn't come in one easy moment. There is actually real character development here.While I found his relationship with the woman sports writer to be less interesting, it, too, was not written with broad strokes. Both of the characters have issues they need to resolve, and they find it can't be done quickly. The dialogue between them, once they started seeing each other, I found to ring remarkably true, and to be very intelligently adult. These are not two teenagers "letting it all hang out"; these are two intelligent adults who have things to figure out, and who know how to express different aspects of themselves with words, often carefully chosen. In general, the dialogue in this movie is written for adults, which may explain, in part, why this movie left some viewers - younger viewers - uninterested.For that matter, I suspect the ideal audience for this movie is older men, who have started to deal with what it feels like when, in one way or another, they can no longer do what their bodies once did. That's not the ideal demographic for a modern movie.But the script is not all serious character development. There are some truly remarkable comedy moments as well, such as when Stan gets the obnoxious runner on base out to save the young pitcher's career by secretly bringing the ball back from the mound. Or, of course, the last shot, when Stan does the Viagra commercial his earlier, obnoxious self had sworn he would never do.The other thing that makes this movie so good - and it is very good - is the acting, first and foremost Bernie Mac's. As I said, I've never seen him in a movie before, so I don't know what he's "usually" like. But here he acts like a pro. He understands that great movie acting is done often with slight modifications of the face, and he is very good at that. You can see hurt and pain in his face and eyes in a way that makes them far more powerful than any ranting and screaming would have been. Again, perhaps you have to be older to appreciate the hurt he feels, but he does a first-rate job of conveying it. He never appears to be acting. Because, in fact, I am not used to seeing him on the screen, I could - and often did - simply believe I was watching a 47-year old former baseball player trying to do what he had once been able to do, and hurting terribly when he could not.I indicated the spoiler alert above, but still, WARNING: HERE COMES A SPOILER. I spent much of the movie wondering how it would end. Would it be the cliché: at the last moment, he gets the hit he needs and all is well? No, the script was much better than that - and showed a real knowledge of baseball. He sacrifices his chance at a 3000th hit with a sacrifice bunt, so that the younger player can make it to home and win the game for the Brewers - a win that will not clinch the pennant, far from it, but will earn them a respectable 3rd place, better than the 5th for which they had seemed destined. And when he does that, the team does not all crowd around him, as they would in a clichéd movie. No, they crowd around the player who made it across the plate, as you would expect in real life. Only after that do they notice poor Stan.This is a movie made for real grownups, and that's a high complement. The movie teaches an important lesson, but it never preaches and it very often made me laugh. First and foremost, however, it thoroughly impressed me with the quality of the writing and then the quality of the acting that that writing allowed.Even if you have no interest in baseball, you'll enjoy this movie. It's something everyone involved can be very proud of.----------------------------------I watched this movie again tonight, after several weeks of watching movies about baseball. This is definitely one of the best, much better, imnsho, than Major League, or The Natural. It deals with real characters in real situations. A very powerful movie.
