The Honeymooners

This race-swapping update of the classic Jackie Gleason-Art Carney sitcom has Cedric the Entertainer and Gabrielle Union as Ralph and Alice Kramden, with Mike Epps and Regina Hall as the Nortons, trying to raise the down payment on a duplex before Ralph’s harebrained schemes ruin everything. No need to compare this with the original; it’s one of the worst movies of the year strictly on its own (de)merits. Cedric actually has a touch of Gleason’s poignant bluster, and Union even has Audrey Meadows’ vocal inflections. But Epps is off somewhere in his own movie (he never matches Cedric’s comic rhythms; they’re not a team), and Hall is simply wasted. The script by Barry Blaustein, Danny Jacobson, Don Rhymer and David Sheffield seems always to be starting over, and John Schultz’s direction is coarse and unruly.