Fat Albert
Written
by: Bill Cosby & Charles Kipps
Director:
Joel Zwick
Release Date: December 25, 2004
Status: Finished
Cast:
Kenan Thompson as Fat Albert
Kyle Pratt as Doris
Shedrack Anderson as Rudy
Marques Houston as Dumb Donald
Raven-Symoné as
Danielle
Synopsis:
The bright cartoon colors of the Saturday
morning classic Fat Albert get brought into the real world--or a
Hollywood facsimile of reality, at any rate. When a teenage girl named Doris (Kyla
Pratt) sheds a tear onto her TV's remote control, her unhappiness summons Fat
Albert (Kenan Thompson, Barbershop 2), Mushmouth, Dumb Donald, Old Weird
Harold, and the rest of the gang from Bill Cosby's popular cartoon (inspired by
his childhood memories of growing up in Philadelphia). Doris is, to say the
least, a little freaked out and doesn't really want Fat Albert to help solve her
problems--but with the blithe confidence that only cartoon characters can have,
Fat Albert and the gang follow her to school to root out the source of her
misery. One of the movie's problems (which are legion) is that Doris's world
isn't much more real than the cartoon one; it's a sterile, clean-cut caricature
of a city neighborhood. In fact, the whole movie feels suspiciously like a
commercial for a DVD of Fat Albert cartoons, an advertisement for which
actually appears in the movie, making for a bizarrely self-referential product
placement. Thompson, surprisingly, hangs on to his dignity in the face of the
inane proceedings and even gives Fat Albert a hint of gravitas
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