Do studios have a death wish? They must, for how else can one explain the existence of this live-action, big-screen version of a 1970's cartoon series that very few of the people who are the target audience have ever even heard of, let alone remember fondly? Did studio execs really think there was a huge "Fat Albert" fan base out there clamoring for this movie to be made? The premise of this "Fat Albert" seems designed to cater to all those pre-teens out there with postmodernist tendencies. Through some sort of unexplained fluke of magic, Fat Albert and his "gang" leap out of a TV screen to come to the aid of a young girl who is having trouble fitting in with the kids at school. As is his wont, Fat Albert - whose guttural "hey
hey
hey
" became his official character trademark - dispenses chicken soup sentiment and fortune cookie wisdom as he goes about the business of solving everyone's problems.
Bill Cosby, who was the creator of the original "Fat Albert," has co-written (along with Charles Kipps) a screenplay that is so well-intentioned, so inoffensive and so white-bread bland in its attitude and demeanor that the movie seems to be evaporating even as you're watching it (much as the kids gradually fade away - though it is strangely imperceptible to the viewer - as their time in the real world runs out). Although the film is supposed to be about what happens when these two-dimensional cartoon characters from the 1970's are suddenly confronted with the three-dimensional realities of the early 21st Century, the Philadelphia that is shown to us in the movie - an obvious studio backlot if ever there was one - is so squeaky-clean and homogenized in appearance that the film might as well be a cartoon itself. Thus, the comic tension that should be derived from that juxtaposition of two vastly different worlds never materializes, and we sit in backside-numbing soreness waiting for the movie to end.
Keenan Thompson (from "SNL") brings a certain amount of sweetness and energy to the title character, but the screenwriters and director Joel Zwick have given him zero material of quality to work with. "Fat Albert" may be fine for undiscriminating and undemanding preschool audiences - though most of them probably won't have any real familiarity with or affection for the original reference point - but it is far too juvenile to be of any interest to the people who grew up watching it on TV.
Bill Cosby, who was the creator of the original "Fat Albert," has co-written (along with Charles Kipps) a screenplay that is so well-intentioned, so inoffensive and so white-bread bland in its attitude and demeanor that the movie seems to be evaporating even as you're watching it (much as the kids gradually fade away - though it is strangely imperceptible to the viewer - as their time in the real world runs out). Although the film is supposed to be about what happens when these two-dimensional cartoon characters from the 1970's are suddenly confronted with the three-dimensional realities of the early 21st Century, the Philadelphia that is shown to us in the movie - an obvious studio backlot if ever there was one - is so squeaky-clean and homogenized in appearance that the film might as well be a cartoon itself. Thus, the comic tension that should be derived from that juxtaposition of two vastly different worlds never materializes, and we sit in backside-numbing soreness waiting for the movie to end.
Keenan Thompson (from "SNL") brings a certain amount of sweetness and energy to the title character, but the screenwriters and director Joel Zwick have given him zero material of quality to work with. "Fat Albert" may be fine for undiscriminating and undemanding preschool audiences - though most of them probably won't have any real familiarity with or affection for the original reference point - but it is far too juvenile to be of any interest to the people who grew up watching it on TV.