Ebert and wife.
Posted on 06/10/2005 2:27:42 PM PDT by My Favorite Headache
Reviews: 'The Honeymooners' Just Junk
June 9,2005
Both critics who love the updated movie version of the classic Jackie Gleason series The Honeymooners and those who hate it (and there are far more of the latter than the former) agree that the movie has little in common with the TV show.
"Change may be good for the characters, but not necessarily for the audience," writes A.O. Scott in the New York Times. And it's not just that the movie has an all-black cast, headed by Cedric the Entertainer. "Badly paced and leadenly scripted, with jokes that only register because characters pause for the expected laughter (almost nonexistent at the screening I attended), The Honeymooners is one of the biggest disappointments of this still-young movie year," writes Chris Kaltenback in the Baltimore Sun.
"The Honeymooners doesn't work because of an extremely lame script attributed to four writers, which takes a concept that would barely have supported one of the original 'Classic 39' episodes and stretches it to a 90-minute feature that ... feels at least twice as long," comments Lou Lumenick in the New York Post.
Glenn Whipp in the Los Angeles Daily News doesn't mince words. "This new version of The Honeymooners stinks," he writes. "There is no reason for it to exist other than cashing in on a brand name." Wesley Morris of the Boston Globe, one of a handful of black film critics, begins his review by remarking, "An uncle of mine used to joke that he'd know racial parity had been achieved in Hollywood when black people started making movies as bad as white people's. I always thought his joke aimed too low. But according to his logic, the predominantly black update of The Honeymooners would be an achievement. It's not as bad as the average Hollywood movie, it's stupendously worse."
However, Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times calls it 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." Lowe Returning
Roger Ebert just wants to see his name on movie posters next to mr. Jeffery Lyons.
That was going to be my post.
Our local critics also panned this film.
This business of recycling old movies and tv shows -- sorry, but I liked the originals (maybe) -- have no interest in seeing something like this rehashed again. And some of the originals weren't that good either to begin with.
Ebert is an almost infallible reviewer. If he says it's good it's almost certainly not and vice-versa.
I think that's true of most critics. :)
Ebert would stoop over and kiss his own bee-hind if he thought it was the "politically correct" thing to do.
Ebert's one of the biggest phonies the liberals have ever produced.
I'm not surprised at all that this movie is a stinker.
One of my favorite movie review sites.
Ebert's liberalism is the worst thing he could have ever come out of the closet with.It taints every single review he does.
Believe it or not, Michael Medved liked it.
The idea had potential, but it seems they got too far from the original. It would only work as a self-aware hommage to the Gleason classic.
I was hoping it would be good.
When Siskel was living, I knew I could bank on any film siskel liked and Ebert hated.
IIRC, Ebert is married to a black woman. Perhaps he feels the need to support black films
Bang zoom straight to the dollar theater, Alice!
Then I guess that he will LOVE the new version of KOJAK!
Ebert and wife.
Wesley Morris of the Boston Globe got it right:
"There is no reason for it to exist other than cashing in on a brand name."
Far too much of this happening these days. Doesn't anyone possess the ability to have an original thought?
Some things should never be remade and the Honeymooners is one of them. I will go out of my way to avoid this.
If, as it appears, Hollywood is out of ideas, they can reach me via FreepMail! ;)
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