We're getting close to the bottom of the tub when it comes to finding cartoons to turn into movies. This is the Hollywood trend that takes an old TV franchise that parents remember, and hipping it up with teen stars and rap music to get "the kids" interested too. It worked for Garfield (bad movie, big hit) and Bill Cosby's Fat Albert is the latest off the assembly line. But while Cosby's heart is in the right place, and he should be applauded for his effort to teach kids the importance of friendship, Fat Albert is pretty thin.
In this Purple Rose Of Cairo meets The Brady Bunch, Kenan Thompson is "Fat Albert" and the premise has the bulky Hey-Hey-Hey-er and his gang popping out of the TV set to help a lonely girl (Kyla Pratt) find friends. Yes, it's 2004, but Fat Albert and his buddies are from a timewarped '70s TV series, so in addition to being cartoon characters in a three-dimensional world, they have never seen a cell phone, and don't know what a DVD is, and let's not even tell them about the election in 2000.
The only one I remember is Fat Albert. I also vaguely recall that kid with the knit hat stretched over his face. But we are supposed to be familiar with all the characters in the Cosby oeuvre. Each of Fat Albert's pals gets a storyline and a Back To The Future-ish dilemma at midpoint when the gang learns their day-glo colors are fading; if they don't get back into the TV they will disappear altogether. It's not the most original ticking clock, but it leads to the true reveal about where these kids came from in the first place.
The Fat Albert characters are based on real people and were the basis of routines Cosby did in his stand-up act. Their adventures growing up on the streets of Philadelphia became the basis of the Fat Albert show. We learn this when Fat Albert realizes that he and his friends are cartoons, and seeks out his father/ "creator" Bill Cosby who appears as himself. Cosby gives out the needed advice to his creation to send Albert and his cartoon pals back where they belong. And in a touching coda we learn the fate of the real Albert when Cosby and the men he based his characters on visit the graveside of their old pal. And there they are in the flesh: Old Weird Harold, Mush Mouth and... all the others.
If this sounds confusing, like double mumbo-jumbo, it is. But logic of the inside-out kind is only part of the problem. The other is that the Fat Albert series may have been produced in the '70s but its Our Gang feel was pure '50s -- Cosby's childhood era. Fat Albert was a lighweight when the show aired the first time, and is even more so now.
Even less effective is the plotting and jokes which both could have been speeded along by director Joel Zwick. But Thompson (late of Nickelodeon's Kenan and Kel and Saturday Night Live) is a winning presence and a talented musical performer. And there is a nice feeling to the proceedings, a wholesome sense of fun -- that is sure to drive today's kids away in droves. Sad to say, we agree with the message, but will Cosby's nostaligic flashback hit home for fans in 2004?
Fat chance.
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