Purists needn't bother. Nor those anticipating laughs worthy of the namesake. Neither one of moviedom's best adaptations (Maverick) or worst desecrations (I Spy) of a TV show, The Honeymooners is a sporadically amusing, instantly disposable update of the sitcom gem, as forgettable as the series was memorable. But as long as the classic 39 episodes exist, fulminating in a critical fury seems silly, so we won't.
Mounting a movie trying to re-create the double-barreled comic artillery of Jackie Gleason's blowhard Everyman and Art Carney's doofus sidekick is a kamikaze mission, so exec producers/stars Cedric and Epps (Ralph and Norton) have made a Honeymooners for people who (mostly) don't remember The Honeymooners—that is, for a new generation (nothing wrong with that) with echoes of the original.
Bus driver Ralph and wife Alice (Union) and sewer worker Norton and wife Trixie (Regina Hall) are still Brooklyn neighbors, living across from the roaring El (for non-urbanites, the elevated train). But now the core cast is black; we're in the present; the Kramdens' place is not as sparse; references are on the order of Beyonce and jokes like "You're a regular UPN sitcom (replacing "a regular riot") Alice"; and the wives, unlike their '50s-housewife counterparts, work as diner waitresses. Absent is the non-PC "Bang! Zoom! To the moon!" Rather, Ralph tenderly promises Alice a life in which, "I'll take you to the moon."
Alice and Trixie dream middle-class—home ownership—but Ralph still dreams rich, with big-money payoffs: trying to turn an abandoned train car into a tour vehicle, and racing a greyhound, aided by Epps' hapless Norton (sans Carney's T-shirt and porkpie hat). But isolated comic sparks never collide for combustible comedy, leaving sketches stitched together that never build any unifying momentum. It's all mechanical motions—Ralph's exaggerated exasperation, Norton's spastic physical reactions—minus the heart.
Cedric borrows Gleason's baritone bombast, but unsurprisingly seems much smaller on the big screen than Gleason did on the small one. Epps' dim-witted schnook lacks Carney's animated energy that made Norton so lovable. But Union's Alice is radiant and believable, and Leguizamo steals scenes as a motormouth hustler.
The movie won't endure. But the series will. And baby, that's still the greatest.