CNS Movie Review: The Honeymooners

The Honeymooners

By Harry Forbes
Catholic News Service

NEW YORK (CNS) -- There's a New York bus driver named Ralph Kramden, and he's got a sewer-working friend named Ed Norton. And they have wives named Alice and Trixie. And at the end of the movie, Ralph says, "Baby, you're the greatest." But that's about the only resemblance this ill-conceived contemporary reworking of "The Honeymooners" (Paramount) bears to the classic 1950s' television series.

Without the peerless Jackie Gleason and Art Carney, not to mention Audrey Meadows and Joyce Randolph, there's little point in revisiting this territory. (Even Gleason's later musicalized TV version with Sheila MacRae and Jane Kean as the wives was several notches below the original, though compared to this big-screen version, with its amiable but uninspired black cast, it was genius.)

Cedric the Entertainer is a likable actor but no Gleason. He occasionally suggests a faint echo of Gleason when he raises his voice, but Cedric's Ralph never explodes as deliciously as Gleason did. Mike Epps as Norton makes almost no attempt to be "comic," but merely a genial, sometimes wrongheaded friend. Gabrielle Union and Regina Hall are attractive as their long-suffering wives, but Union's Alice has none of the tartness or wry delivery of her forebear.

The tepid script (credited to Danny Jacobson, David Sheffield, Barry W. Blaustein and Don Rhymer) begins with Ralph's quick courtship of Alice (she meets him at the wheel of his bus), then flashes forward six years to the present, with Ralph coming up with yet another harebrained money-making scheme that's doomed to failure, and eventually morphs into a contrived story about Ralph and Ed entering a greyhound they find in a dumpster in a dog race to earn money to buy a suburban house for their wives. Alice has negotiated buying the house from a sweet old lady, who is being hounded by a sneaky real estate agent played by Eric Stoltz.

But, unbeknownst to Alice, Ralph had squandered their savings on an antique subway train. (Ralph bought the train at an auction, while Ed kept a Japanese businessman from bidding on it, a comic plot turn that seems slightly out of keeping with their basically decent characters.)

John Leguizamo shows up as a dog trainer with a dubious past who helps Ralph and Ed get the dog, Iggy, ready for the big race. And Broadway veteran Carol Woods has some bright moments as Alice's overbearing mother. "If only Jesus will stop making movies, and answer the prayers of a righteous woman," she exclaims at one point, presumably referencing "The Passion of the Christ."

In short, director John Schultz's not terribly objectionable but ultimately bland film is nowhere near the much-loved series in either tone or laugh quotient. Stick with the TV reruns instead.

The film contains some mild profanity, crass expressions, fleeting irreverence, crude humor, and innuendo. The USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting classification is A-II -- adults and adolescents. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is PG-13 -- parents are strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.

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Forbes is director of the Office for Film & Broadcasting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

END

Copyright (c) 2005 Catholic News Service/USCCB. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed.
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