The Honeymooners

As a child I watched Jackie Gleason's variety show, where one of the regular sketches was "The Honeymooners". I later had the opportunity to watch some reruns of the old black-and-white sitcom with its brilliant performances.

I had high hopes for this movie, and I wasn't really disappointed. I just enjoyed it for what it was. A silly two hours with commercials with some reasonably talented actors making me laugh with ridiculous situations. But I couldn't help but think that someone out there could have done it better. After all, Jackie Gleason, Art Carney and Audrey Meadows were some of the greatest comic actors ever. No one in this movie even came close.

John Leguizamo gives a real standout performance here. If anyone is talented out of this cast, he is. But Cedric the Entertainer, Mike Epps and Gabrielle Union all give good performances too. It's just that this movie was probably on the same level as Tyler Perry or Martin Lawrence. Fun, but nothing that could be called "The Greatest".

The women working? No way Jackie Gleason would let his wife work, remember? Audrey Meadows, however, would have put him in his place if she had ever needed to work. And as I recall, she was too pretty for the role. Gabrielle Union is gorgeous.

The storyline with the dog is kind of ridiculous and miraculous. But it made me laugh.

The movie's villain is too cartoonish. But I always hoped he wouldn't get that great house and that our heroes would.

Don't expect too much, but it's not so bad.

You cannot improve on perfection. Most authorities consider the original TV series to be one of the all-time great sitcoms ever made. Its keys were its appropriateness to its era, and the brilliant cast.

While I certainly appreciate Cedric the Entertainer's considerable talents, with all due respect to him, he is NOT Jackie Gleason, and the other members of this cast cannot hold a candle to the likes of Art Carney and Audrey Meadows.

Here's a tip to Hollywood:

Instead of trying to make every TV show into a movie, why not show some creativity and actually come up with something NEW? If you need a reminder, remember Tom Arnold's horrific remake of McHale's Navy.....or the God-awful remake of Sergeant Bilko of a few years back. You can't do better than the original, now or ever.

If I could give this no stars, I would.

I have higher expectations for a movie than a bottom-of-the-barrel sitcom episode. I didn't want to go but the group voted for this one. I'll be reminding those who voted to see this movie about their poor taste when we vote for the next movies to see.

The producers, writers, director, movie executives, etc. should hang their heads in shame. They knew it wasn't funny when they released it. The test audiences, if there were any, must have been ignored.

Why does Hollywood release this kind of junk and then wonder why movie attendance is down? Why do actors sign up even after reading the script and knowing this will be a second-rate movie, at best?

A remake, or movie version, of a TV show is nothing new. However, lets keep some similarity here. The first big change in "artistic" change that I noticed recently was Dare Devil where The Kingpin was played by Michael Duncan. I love his work, but Kingpin was a huge WHITE GUY. Now we have The Honeymooners in which the families are BLACK. What the F***. Even in this day of political correctness how can they expect us not to notice that. Even in all the other comments I looked at no one mentioned this. Come on! Enough is enough. This would be like re-filming Patton with Morgan Freeman. But, given that no one seemed to "notice" the characters of this movie are of the wrong race I would be willing to bet no one would say anything if Freeman was portrayed as Patton. And, with that I say lets make a movie about President Lincoln, played by Bill Cosby, proclaiming slaves are free, and they can be played by Philapinos.

With every other mildly successful TV show or movie from the past being revamped, remade, or reimagined, it's not a big surprise that "The Honeymooners" would get a 21st century update.

Now, having said that, I believe this was a huge waste of an excellent opportunity. Now, I really don't care that the four main characters were reimagined as African-Americans. Hey, if it's a good movie, James Bond could be Black for all I care. This movie, however, given the script, was not worth making.

In fact, let's all just agree to erase this film from our collective memories. The REAL "Honeymooners" movie needs to wait about five to seven years for JOSH PECK from the Nickelodeon Show "Drake & Josh" to get old enough to step into Jackie Gleason's shoes. If you have never seen Peck before, watch the show. He oozes Gleason's influence (he is even an accomplished pool player as seen in one episode).

Of course, this is all my opinion which is probably not worth the time it took you to read this, but thanks anyway.