Fat Albert (2004) * *

Directed by:  Joel Zwick

Starring: Kenan Thompson, Kyla Pratt, Dania Ramirez, Bill Cosby

Fat Albert is the live-action adaptation of Fat Albert and The Cosby Kids, which aired in the 1970s.    An outcast teen named Doris (Pratt) is watching a rerun of Fat Albert and, whoosh, the gang jumps through the TV set and into the real world!     This may be the most farfetched thing I've ever seen.    I mena, there are Fat Albert reruns on TV in the 21st century?  

The movie version is an innocuous, affable film that wants to be loved.     It is harmless entertainment that aims to spread positive messages to its audience; not an unworthy goal.      It has no illusions of being anything more than what it is.     Being overly critical of such a film is like kicking your dog because he hasn't mastered trigonometry.     The plot is underwhelming and everything is tidied up at the end, much like you would expect.      Fat Albert, if nothing else, contains the most sanitized version of an inner city I've ever seen.     There is no trash anywhere, no graffiti, no crime, and nothing is out of place.    The streets are so clean you can eat off of them.    Not that you would want to.

After Doris finds herself with a room full of cartoon characters come to life, she heads off to school with them after they fail to reenter the TV.     The group has to wait until the next rerun, which is the next day at 2:30pm, to try and go back into their old world.    There are plenty of fish-out-of-water moments, such as their first encounter with a cell phone and seeing a poster advertising their TV show release for DVD.   Or, di-vi-da as they mispronounce it.     But they seem to acclimate reasonably well considering they were just cartoons not so long ago.     Then again, seeing this innocent bunch scared and confused about their new surroundings would be kind of a bummer.

Fat Albert and his crew, including Dumb Donald (who wears a mask), uncoordinated Old Weird Harold, Mushmouth (who speaks gibberish), Rudy, etc. ably solve Doris' problem of being a loner as well as delivering comeuppances to bullies.    Fat Albert even wins a race against a track athlete.     Kenan Thompson is a likable, genial Fat Albert who can find a positive solution to any problem.    The only concern for the bunch is that their shirt colors are fading, which means they have to get back into their TV world or risk disappearing for good.     Bill Cosby appears as himself and explains to Fat Albert (after at first fainting from the sight of him), that there is sort of a familial relationship between he and Doris.    Sort of.

There is a touching scene at the end which shows the real people Bill Cosby based the Cosby Kids on.     They're old men of course because Cosby based the characters off of his real-life childhood friends, but this provides a human element to the people we thought of as cartoon characters.    It only emphasizes that Fat Albert doesn't have much ambition when you consider what directions the film could've gone in.