OxfordPress.com

Grade: B

Verdict: Bernie Mac's got game, even if the movie's a little lame.

By BOB TOWNSEND
Cox News Service

Here's the deal on "Mr. 3000," y'all: It's about as predictable as the strains "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" played during the seventh inning stretch. But bug-eyed funnyman Bernie Mac makes this slight sports comedy worth watching, taking the laughs well into the bottom of the ninth.

The pitch: Mac plays big, bad Stan Ross, a pretty good baseball player who up and quit on the day he got his 3,000th hit. Never mind that he also turned his back on his Milwaukee Brewers teammates in the middle of a pennant race. See, Stan's only real interest was in guaranteeing himself a place in the Baseball Hall of Fame. And as the supreme reflection of his raging egotism, he now owns a sports bar and a string of gaudy strip mall stores and restaurants named after "Mr. 3000."

• The swing: But even the sports writers who've always hated him couldn't have hoped for a better comeuppance for Stan. Turns out, three of his hits were actually counted twice, and Mr. 3000 is really only Mr. 2,997. To reclaim his title, and have any hope of making it to Cooperstown, he has to get busy with the Brewers again. Problem is, at 47, Stan has gone soft in the middle, and the new players call him "Old School."

• Home run: As a stand-up comedian and sitcom star, Mac is used to making the most out of his material. And that's just what he does in "Mr. 3000." Diehard baseball fans will quibble with some of the humor and game footage. But Mac's portrayal of the aging slugger goes beyond smacking and sliding physical comedy. He inhabits the persona of a selfish celebrity who jokes his way through loneliness with a pitch-perfect bend of brashness and vulnerability. His rapid-fire, foul-mouthed retorts and asides are in full-effect mode. And just seeing him delicately tip-toe around like a hungry hippo, wrapped in only a bed sheet, elicits plenty of giggles.

• Bobbles: As great as Mac is, "Mr. 3000" never takes the shape of a really good show. Director Charles Stone III ("Drumline") seems intent on not using the usual inning by inning, game by game pace of many baseball movies, which is laudable. But what he comes up with instead is sometimes so choppy that it doesn't seem to be moving the story in any direction. Worse yet is the formulaic subplot, which wastes the talents of Angela Bassett as Stan's love interest, Mo, who also happens to be an ESPN reporter. The scenes between Mac and Bassett are obviously calculated as target audience pleasers, but come off as oddly awkward teasers — at least until the amusing finale.