The Honeymooners

This is a movie that teeters on the brink of three stars, but just doesn't quite get there.

The Honeymooners had several moments of certifiable humor, and I don't think that without the performances of Cedric the Entertainer and Mike Epps this movie would have been even remarkably amusing. Cedric plays Ralph Kramden, a city bus driver whose wife, Alice (Gabrielle Union), dreams that one day the two will have enough money to buy a house. Their upstairs neighbors, Ed Norton (Mike Epps) and his wife Trixie (Regina Hall) are the couple's best friends and potential co-owners of a duplex that Alice and Trixie have been admiring. Unfortunately, they need to collectively acquire $20,000 within two weeks in order to buy the property. Blah blah blah, Alice thinks they already have half the money without realizing Ralph has spent it on another useless scheme, blah blah blah, Ralph and Ed have to come up with a way to quickly earn all $20,000 in order to avoid disappointing their wives. Cue hijinks.

Ralph and Ed dance in the park for money; they pretend to be blind beggers on the streetcorner; they try to defraud kindly neighborhood folk by pretending they are raising money for some children's charity. It's ok though, afterall, they just want to make their wives happy.

The movie finally gets funny once Ralph and Ed hire Dodge (John Leguizamo) to train a greyhound that they found carelessly misplaced in a dumpster, with the idea that they will enter the dog, Iggy, into a race and win the convenient $20,000 prize. Dodge is quite easily the funniest character in the movie, and his interaction with Cedric the Entertainer almost forces the leading comedian to be the straight man for Leguizamo's comedy. Unfortunately these moments of genuine humor are just a little too sparse, and the remainder of the movie drags on. There were only so many of Alice's reproachful looks at her husband that I could take. I began to wonder at one point if Gabrielle Union's sole purpose in the the movie was to tilt her head and look exasperated.

In the end, I wouldn't say this was a bad movie, and it could have been a lot more cheesy. The actors really did a good job keeping the movie somewhat realistic, and like I said there were some very funny moments. Not a bad movie to watch if you find the time, but it wouldn't be a terrible decision to wait for the DVD to come out.