Fat Albert

Starring Kenan Thompson, Kyla Pratt, and Jermaine Williams. Rated PG.

Seldom, if ever, has a fictional character been given longer or more intense thought from his creator than has Fat Albert. Inspired by memories of 1940s North Philadelphia, Fat Albert first emerged in Bill Cosby's early '60s monologues. After becoming a television star with I Spy, Cosby commenced university studies in education. Theories of learning merged with further reminiscences, yielding Cosby's hit cartoon series. Overcoming crappy Filmation production values with clever banter and a genial spirit, the Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids show ran from 1972 to 1984. The project also fuelled Cosby's doctoral thesis: "An Integration of the Visual Media Via Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids into the Elementary School Curriculum as a Teaching Aid and Vehicle to Achieve Increased Learning".

And now the show has become a live-action comedy feature film. Cosby is still hands-on with Fat Albert, cowriting the script with Charles Kipps and taking a brief but significant cameo. Cosby also exercised his producer muscle by turfing Forest Whitaker from the director's chair and handing the reins to Joel Zwick (My Big Fat Greek Wedding).

The movie opens in North Philadelphia, present day. Doris, a depressed high-schooler, is watching Fat Albert on TV. A tear falls on the remote control, magically creating a portal between the cartoon and the real world. Always eager to help someone in distress, Fat Albert leads his friends through the portal and into Doris's apartment. Their appearance does little to reassure Doris of her own mental health or social status, especially when the Junkyard Gang decides to tag along with her to school. But the transition delights the kids, especially Fat Albert (Kenan Thompson, noted for his Cosby impression on Saturday Night Live), who longs to remain in three-dimensional form.

As a metafictional memoir--cum--
pedagogic instrument, Fat Albert is utterly unique. Cosby appears (as himself) to provide exposition, while the script reflects his long-standing social views. The movie contrasts the values of politeness, altruism, and community with those of selfishness, isolation, and aggression. Cosby himself did the same in commencement addresses earlier this year that were savaged by the black press, which viewed him as a self-loathing reactionary. Presumably, the movie's use of slapstick and broad caricature are meant to sweeten these messages.

Ambition does not necessarily produce entertainment, though. Although I was mildly diverted by the on-screen activity, I felt no particular affection for pouty Doris, the main character. Nor could I identify with Fat Albert, Mushmouth, Old Weird Harold, Rudy, or Bill, as presented here. By design, the Junkyard Gang were anachronisms even in their '70s heyday, and the movie does them no service by further distancing them from reality as "cartoons sprung to life". In their own milieu, the gang members were not geeky phantasms but confident, likable, and well-adjusted kids that you'd want as friends.

Leonard Part 6 and Ghost Dad should have warned Cosby that he has no success with magic/fantasy plots. Cosby's near-hegemonic status in '80s entertainment, with The Cosby Show, best-selling books, and commercial endorsements, was founded in realistic storytelling. The tragedy of Fat Albert is not that it is silly and mediocre, but that its mediocrity wastes the opportunity to repatriate the civilizing influence of Bill Cosby from accidental self-exile on the margins of pop culture.

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