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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Friday, June 10, 2005

'Honeymooners' falls flat

By Tom Long
The Detroit News

THE HONEYMOONERS (PG-13) Two stars (Fair)

This attempt to revive the classic TV show is respectful but poorly written, placing the Kramdens and Nortons in a half-homage and half-standard weak comedy. It's telling and disturbing that Leguizamo is the funniest guy in the film and his character never existed in the TV show. Oh, and the race thing? Thankfully it's irrelevant. Cedric the Entertainer, Gabrielle Union, Mike Epps, Regina Hall, and Leguizamo star for director John Schultz. 90 minutes.

Give this to the film version of "The Honeymooners": It shows no disrespect to the classic TV show. Unfortunately, it's not nearly as funny as the classic TV show, either.

Not that there aren't laughs in this urban update, there are just plenty of lulls, as well. Director John Schultz and his cast obviously have tried hard to stay fairly true to the original show, to the point of outright mimicry at times. But the film ends up following an openly dumb storyline that strays far away from any "Honeymooners" feel.

It's as if the movie is half "Honeymooners" remake and half typical weak urban comedy, which doesn't add up to a whole lot of anything. It's telling that the funniest character in the movie — a sleazy dog trainer played by John Leguizamo — has nothing at all to do with the TV show. He's just plugged in to give the movie some zip.

"The Honeymooners" is about big-dreams-and-schemes bus driver Ralph Kramden (Cedric the Entertainer this time around, Jackie Gleason in the original) and his long-suffering wife Alice (Gabrielle Union/Audrey Meadows), and their best friends, sewer worker Ed Norton (Mike Epps/Art Carney) and his wife Trixie (Regina Hall/Joyce Randolph). They all live in the same cramped apartment building in New York.

Oh, by the way, the characters in the movie are black. The characters in the TV show were white. And the best thing about the movie may be that the racial shift doesn't matter.

In the television show, most of the action was contained in the Kramden's apartment, which was a pressure cooker of fast lines, exploding tempers and white lies gone wrong. In the movie, the pressure cooker is released as the action moves outside, and a distinction becomes apparent: When the action is inside the apartment, it's the old "Honeymooners." When it's outside, it's the modern-day mostly lame comedy.

The action is outside the apartment a great deal of the time. Oops.

So the movie unfolds as a series of typical "Honeymooners" bits — Ralph's mother-in-law comes to dinner, a street hustler dupes Ralph, Norton fixes a leaky pipe — tied to an elongated storyline. That storyline involves Alice's plans to put a down payment on a duplex without realizing that Ralph has squandered their savings on a hapless scheme and is now trying to win the money back by racing a stray dog Norton found.

Which is where Leguizamo comes in as a street-hustler dog trainer named Dodge. It's as if this character, a compendium of tall tales and bold lies, stepped out of a completely different movie, and it's clear Leguizamo is doing a lot of improv here. It says nothing good about "The Honeymooners" that you quickly wish you were watching a movie called "Dodge."

But you're not. Cedric does an acceptable Ralph Kramden, although he's not quite as fully ridiculous as he should be. Epps may be adequate as Norton to those who've never seen Carney's original interpretation of the character, but he's nowhere near the physical comedian Carney was. There's a scene in a pool hall where Epps tries to channel Carney and it falls terribly flat.

Somewhat surprisingly, Union and Hall are far better at hitting the right notes with Alice and Trixie, with Union in particular capturing the cadence and spunk of Meadows' Alice.

But spunk isn't enough to save this script. This classic hasn't been defiled, but it hasn't been reborn either. "The Honeymooners" gets nowhere near the moon.

Rated PG-13 for some innuendo and rude humor.