When it comes to the new movie version of “The Honeymooners,” it doesn’t really matter whether you’re a fan of Jackie Gleason’s classic TV comedy. This film isn’t funny, period.
In the 1950s, Gleason and his inspired cast mined gold from a quartet of resolutely blue-collar characters: bus driver Ralph Kramden and his plain-spoken wife Alice, and neighbors Ed Norton (proud employee of the New York City sewers) and Trixie. Ralph was perpetually hatching some unlikely dream of success, and Ed dutifully followed him along.
Gleason and Art Carney were so indelibly associated with their roles as Ralph and Ed, it would be hard for any actor to step into those shoes. On the other hand, “The Honeymooners” is unknown to audiences who actually make or break movies these days (i.e., teenagers), so no big deal.
The movie has Cedric the Entertainer as Ralph, and Mike Epps as Ed. Both these guys have been very funny in movies (Cedric was a memorable mouthpiece in the “Barbershop” pictures, Epps a wired-up sidekick in “Next Friday”). But they’re both basically comedians, not actors, and they don’t deliver the heart that Gleason and Carney brought to the roles.
Ralph’s schemes include purchasing an old train car at auction (he forgets that a train car needs tracks in order to move) and racing a greyhound at a local track. Meanwhile, they’re burning up the savings that Alice (Gabrielle Union) and Trixie (Regina Hall) are counting on to use as a down payment on a duplex.
A thin screenplay basically repeats the main themes over and over (Ralph really loves Alice, the boys are best friends despite their bickering, etc.). Director John Schultz seems content to let Cedric and Epps improvise in front of the camera, which admittedly results in a few hit-and-run laughs.
The funniest thing about the movie is John Leguizamo, doing one of his hyper, double-talking numbers as an extremely shady dog trainer. Leguizamo comes up with a string of wacky one-liners, which I assume were made up by the actor on the spot. He says of one girlfriend, “I don’t wanna marry her for her money, but I don’t know how else to get it.”
So much about this movie feels like a business decision. For instance, the premise hinges on the reality that the Kramdens are supposedly regular folks, struggling to make ends meet. Yet Ralph has some fancy threads, and Alice is played by Gabrielle Union, a spectacularly beautiful woman. But nobody cared about the discrepancies, because this film is just a package.
Cedric the Entertainer is regular-guy bus driver Ralph Kramden in “The Honeymooners.”
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