The Honeymooners: Critic Reviews

So...why remake this, again?

Superfluous though it may be, The Honeymooners is not so bad.

Cedric and Epps have none of the team chemistry Gleason shared with Art Carney, and Epps' Norton displays none of Carney's eccentricities.

There's plenty of space up there for a colony of mediocre filmmakers. That's right, folks. To the moon. Bang! Zoom!

Blame it all on the Bad Guys, those Hollywood suits who think by committee and never met a focus group they didn't like. This is product, pure and simple.

It's not as bad as the average Hollywood movie, it's stupendously worse.

The real problem is that the Kramdens' precarious financial situation, which gave the original its poignant frisson, is sidestepped.

The honeymoon is over.

Why? Why would someone do this? How did we get here, watching mediocre remakes of classic 1950s sitcoms? What is the meaning of it all? Does cinema have a purpose beyond supporting the theater-concessions industry?

The comedy wannabe has the lamest, most predictable banter of any recent movie.

There have been funnier comedies. But there also have been far worse reasons to make a movie. Or remake a sitcom.

A surprise and a delight, a movie that escapes the fate of weary TV retreads and creates characters that remember the originals, yes, but also stand on their own.

Though the patterns are there, the laughs aren't, mostly because the writing is so lazy and formulaic.

Not only an insult to the original, it should be shown at film schools as proof of how pointless a movie can be.

What The Honeymooners does well, it does very well. The trouble is, it doesn't do enough of what it does well.

It's as if the movie is half Honeymooners remake and half typical weak comedy, which doesn't add up to a whole lot of anything.

This laughless attempt to modernize the Kramdens and Nortons is somewhat akin to sacrilege, as it waters down the characters and strips them of their unforgettable quirks and tics.

Just funny enough to mollify purists and amuse the uninitiated.

A bland, dull and only occasionally funny waste of time that will very soon be gathering dust in the remainder bins.

The gags in this don't just feel played. They're exhausted.

The lunar destination aims far too high. This misbegotten movie heads straight for the dogs and the sewer, literally so.

If not for a few interludes of lively riffing by John Leguizamo, playing a dog trainer and all-around hustler named Dodge, there would be nothing funny about any of this.

A lackluster affair, devoid of laughs and just about anything else one might construe as entertainment.

John Leguizamo steals the show as its sleazy trainer -- not that there's much to steal from John Schultz's joylessly schematic paycheck.

The script (credited to four screenwriters) uses a plethora of already-dated urban inside humor that reeks of pandering.