The Honeymooners

It's hard to improve on perfection and when your trying to update the characters and the situations that they get into it becomes even harder if you're turning it into a movie. The characters that Jackie Gleason created in the early days of television have become icons and some of the jokes that were developed on the show are still funny to this day. Having this series turned into a movie with more current issues and character mannerisms was risky to begin with, but the biggest undertaking here was trying to capture the fun and amusing interactions between characters and the situations that they were in. Unfortunately there is nothing funny or even slightly humorous in this movie; it's stale from the opening credits to the final fade out.
Ralph and Alice Kramden try to come up with $20,000 for a down payment on a house, but are thwarted by bad luck and a vindictive real estate developer. This movie is a clear example of something sounding good on paper but once it's on film everything just falls flat. Some of the jokes are done half heartily and with that happening each performance comes up short and wanting. Cedric the Entertainer was a good choice for the role of Ralph but not allowing him to break loose with his character, the way Gleason use to, just drags the story down even further.
This was a failure from beginning to end, the jokes weren't funny and it was hard to watch these actors try to make the best of a bad situation. I grew-upon watching the Honeymooners and there are a number of ways that this film could have been attacked but with a bad script there is just so much that you can do. Having a black cast fill main character spots was nice to see but the modern urbanization of the situations keeps them all from doing their best work.