Search - The Honeymooners (Full Screen Special Collector's Edition) on DVD

Flawed Comedy That Did Not Need Revitalization...

Kim Anehall | Chicago, IL USA | 11/13/2005

(1 out of 5 stars)

""It's alive!" The infamous words by Dr. Frankenstein could not even bring back a sitcom that has been dead for over a half a century. However, director John Schultz gives his best effort to remake the sitcom from 1955 with a new adaptation into the theaters, as he casts Cedric the Entertainer and Mike Epps as his sidekick. Together with these two comedians, Schultz tries to poke fun of the economical situation of a family, and their attempt to gain the American Dream in a swift and easy manner. However, nothing is easy or swift, as it sets up a myriad of slapstick situations and silly humor.

The film begins to set up the story in New York in the fall of 1999, as Ralph Kramden (Cedric the Entertainer) drives a bus while displaying his dreaming persona. It also shows how he met his future wife Alice (Gabrielle Union) and his deficient skills in business through a Y2K survival kit. Six years later, Ralph is still a bad businessman and a bus driver who keeps dreaming of the big deal. However, his relationship with Alice is no longer as sweet, as it was when he met her for the first time. Now Ralph has to deal with the responsibilities of being married while he also secretively tries to juggle shady business deals in order to make quick money. However, whenever the truth catches up with him, and it usually does, Alice throws her wrath over him.

Honeymooners' storyline focuses on both Ralph and Alice, but also on their neighbors and friends Ed (Mike Epps) and Trixie (Regina Hall). Alice and Trixie have decided to buy a duplex before the entrepreneur William Davis (Eric Stoltz) buys the building, but in order to do that they have to have $20,000 within two weeks. This presents a problem to Ralph, as he has squandered some of their money on a supposedly get-rich-quick deal. It causes further problems for Ralph, as he and Ed begin to look for another quick deal. The dumb thing is that they do not understand when they have a good deal, and they do not know what good business is. When they are lucky to find a sure winner, even then they mess it up.

The story is a sad mess moving in a predictable direction and the silly jokes do not make it any better. Sure, the audience will find opportunity to laugh, but so do people when a stranger tells a funny joke. In Honeymooners the story feels forced while even the performances feel like a bunch of bad skits put together in order to create something that looks like a storyline. With a budget of 27 million dollars, it should raise some questions such as why they green light the project, as it still requires a lot of rewriting and reworking. Maybe in another 50 years, a remake of Honeymooners (2005) will be available that they have been able to revitalize through a proper script that has some life in the story."

Oh, how sweet it isn't

Daniel Jolley | Shelby, North Carolina USA | 05/26/2006

(2 out of 5 stars)

"Here we have one of the most ill-conceived remakes in history, a truly forgettable film exploiting a well-known, much-loved commodity for money (and very little of it, as things turned out). Exploiting may not be the right word for me to use here, however; it's not as if this movie sought out to make fun of the original series, and the transformation of the Kramdens and Nortons into middle-class African-Americans carries no kind of overt or underlying statement whatsoever. The only problem with this odd movie is its failure to be very funny. I've always said that Cedric the Entertainer is always funny. Well, I can't say that anymore. I did get a few laughs over the course of the film, but watching this modern version of The Honeymooners is sort of like watching a fish out of water: initially, it's sort of funny to watch it flop around all over the place; before very long, though, it starts to get boring, all that activity begins to slow down more and more as it makes its way to a painful death, and you're left just standing there, hoping to sneak away before anyone notices you were ever there to begin with. Someone really should have thrown this fish out of water back.

None of the actors seemed to have his heart in what he was doing. Cedric had his moments, but they were few and far between, and I couldn't help but notice that even he seemed rather uncomfortably embarrassed delivering his final and fully predictable line at the very end. There was no real chemistry to be found among the actors, either. Gabrielle Union is a lovely young actress, but she just doesn't have the feisty nature of a true Alice Kramden; she's just too nice for the role. Mike Epps didn't exactly scream Ed Norton to my brain, either.

Plot-wise, there's not much to talk about. Alice and Trixie want to have a home of their own, and Ralph's many get rich quick schemes prevent them from putting a down payment down on the duplex they've found. Ralph scrambles around, jumping from one hare-brained money-making scheme trying to get the money back before Alice finds out it's gone. From sewer-bound trolley cars to dumpster dog racing, Ralph just keeps getting himself closer and closer to the proverbial doghouse. Throw an embarrassingly trite ending on this puppy, and you've got The Honeymooners movie in a nutshell.

The fact that Cedric the Entertainer isn't even very funny in this movie tells you all you need to know about the script. It's all just incredibly bland and lifeless; I never even felt like I was watching a movie. Personally, I think the film might actually have done better without a tie-in to classic television's The Honeymooners, as that really just set this decidedly weak film up for a fairly substantial fall. On its own merits, I would give The Honeymooners two and a half stars - the writing is weak, the characters have little depth, and the whole movie just isn't that funny. I have to round that down to two stars, however, in deference to the Great One, who may or may not have been spinning in his grave when this film was released."