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THE HONEYMOONERS The classic 1950s TV sitcom gets refitted for a 21st century big-screen excursion, but unfortunately, it's the audience who gets it right in the kisser. The plot centers on the efforts of irascible Ralph Kramden (Cedric the Entertainer) and his dim-witted friend Ed Norton (Mike Epps) to raise enough money to put a down payment on a duplex coveted by their wives (Gabrielle Union and Regina Hall). To make that dream a reality, Ralph invests their savings in dubious schemes involving an abandoned train car and an abandoned mutt. One character makes a crack about The WB, which in all honesty is where this feeble film belongs. Forget Jackie Gleason's "To the moon, Alice" catchphrase - "To the video bargain bin" is more like it. 1/2
THE LONGEST YARD Faithfulness to director Robert Aldrich's hard-hitting 1974 film, in which a former football star leads a ragtag group of convicts in a match against the sadistic guards, isn't the problem: Major plot points are kept intact, snatches of dialogue find themselves lifted wholesale, and characters' fates remain the same. But when this version does deviate from its source material, the results are disastrous - and kill any chance the film has in maintaining its modest pleasures. The leading character (Burt Reynolds in the R-rated original, Adam Sandler in this PG-13 piffle) has been softened considerably, while the rampaging homophobia is astonishing (and annoying). Insult comedy can be uproarious in the right hands, but here it's merely witless, the cinematic equivalent of the school bully giving a weaker classmate a wedgie and then declaring himself the epitome of fine-honed drollery.
LORDS OF DOGTOWN The excellent 2002 documentary Dogtown and Z-Boys, which chronicles the rise of the Venice, CA, teens who almost single-handedly revived skateboarding as a national phenomenon during the 1970s, has now been given the fictionalized Hollywood treatment, yet the resultant film fails to capture anything beyond random surface pleasures. Initially, the choice of Catherine Hardwicke as director seemed inspired, but the ample party scenes that drove her gritty film Thirteen seem extraneous here and take the focus away from the real story. Lords of Dogtown is well acted (especially by Heath Ledger as the group's stoner-mentor), and Hardwicke ably recreates a specific time and place. Yet the movie rarely conveys the import of what these lower-income kids accomplished: As depicted here, their cultural revolution seems no more noteworthy than a day spent at the mall.
MADAGASCAR Unlike the banal Robots and Shark Tale, this animated delight strikes an appropriate balance: It's hip without being obnoxious, and it's sentimental without being cloying. Through a wild chain of events, four animal pals from a New York zoo - lion (Ben Stiller), zebra (Chris Rock), hippo (Jada Pinkett Smith) and giraffe (David Schwimmer) - find themselves stranded on the title island. Despite the ingratiating leads (Rock, for one, has never been better), despite the eye-popping animation, and despite the presence of other scene-stealers (check out the lemurs), the main reason to see this is to catch the penguins, four no-nonsense types who plan to dig their way to Antarctica but instead end up hijacking a ship. First Opus, then Sparky, now these guys - the lion may be comfortably ensconced as king of the jungle, but when it comes to the thick brier of popular culture, it's the penguin who reigns supreme. 1/2
MAD HOT BALLROOM Reminiscent of the superior Spellbound, this documentary centers on several groups of kids who, as students enrolled in the NYC public school system's ballroom dancing classes, hope to find themselves competing in the annual tournament. This is yet one more nonfiction film that ably extols the transformative power of the arts and its ability to allow individuals to discover the best within themselves. But the movie also goes beyond that: It captures the palpable love that teachers can feel for their students, and, most intriguingly, it hangs out with these 10- and 11-year-olds as they chat in that open, unaffected manner as only kids can. It's a pleasure spending down time with these lovely boys and girls (most from the lower rungs of the economic ladder), which is why it's disappointing when the movie shifts away from their individuality to focus on the mechanics of the tournament.