Fat Albert

My Big Fat Greek Wedding director Joel Zwick tackles yet another tubby-titled film. Bill Cosby’s hilarious standup monologues about his Philadelphia childhood, which were adapted into a long-running Saturday-morning cartoon show, now emerge as a hugely entertaining big-screen, live-action fantasy for the preteen crowd. The enormous Albert (Kenan Thompson) notices a portal that connects his animated TV neighborhood to the real world. He leads his goofy sidekicks on a humanitarian mission to help a despondent young girl (Kyla Pratt) make new friends. This brisk swirl of social commentary, comedy and music is transcendentally good-natured and squeaky clean and is never preachy.