It should come as no surprise that as filming was likely coming to a close on Fat Albert, Bill Cosby was making his incendiary remarks in the spring to the NAACP about black youth and their poor speech, clothing styles, literacy and more. And this exercise helmed by Joel Zwick (My Big Fat Greek Wedding) and co-written by the Coz is certainly a harkening back to those oh-so-much-more innocent days of the '70s when a group of black kids hanging out in a North Philly junkyard were inspired by a comic- book hero to solve people's problems. Watts Riots? Forget that, they had the Brown Hornet.
Unfortunately, for all that was charming and positive about Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, it was barely suspenseful enough to hold a preteen's attention for a half-hour. And that was back then. Today, with kids more into Lil Bow Wow than Mushmouth, the odds are even steeper against a 100-minute live-action version. Yet, it does work in parts.
A tear from Doris' eye falls on a TV remote and Fat Albert and the gang are able to magically pass from their show into the real world, becoming flesh and blood and wearing Hanna-Barbara-colored clothes. While trying to discern and then solve Doris' high-school problem, the Cosby kids must also cope with a bully (Omarion of B2K), Albert's crush on Doris' foster sister, and the modern world in general. Despite no one seeming to understand that this is the cartoon Fat Albert writ XXXL, the fish-out-of-water scenes are the movie's funniest, as we see wholesome values melded with street cred, and cartoon concerns become real as when Old Weird Harold worries he is physically missing his face.
But Zwick and Cosby never seem quite sure who their audience is. Fat Albert would seem geared to the little ones, but the problems of high-schoolers—and the exposition necessary to set them up and move them along—simply aren't of interest. Likewise, the silliness of seeing Fat Albert impossibly beat the bully in the 40-yard dash is going to bore any teen whiningly dragged to this film by a parent. Hey! Hey! Hey! It's a shame to say ... but Fat Albert could have benefited from a bit more new school.