The Honeymooners

It could be part-autobiographical for director John Schultz who blunders through a tediously half-baked plot and fails to make it pay off.

Rather than putting a modern stamp on a reliable product, The Honeymooners renders one of the most distinctive formulas in television history entirely anonymous.

Four screenwriters, including veteran TV producer Danny Jacobson, have cobbled together a script so rickety that it could itself pass as one of Ralph Kramden's harebrained get-rich schemes.

The comedy wannabe has the lamest, most predictable banter of any recent movie.

The real problem is that the Kramdens' precarious financial situation, which gave the original its poignant frisson, is sidestepped.

I like the cast. They're very talented, they're really funny, they have a dreadful script to work with.

The Honeymooners isn't awful, but it is pure sitcom fodder.

There are two ways to look at the big-screen adaptation of The Honeymooners - as an adaptation of the show, and as a film in it's own right. Either way it's a film that occasionally works, but never manages more than that.

The script (credited to four screenwriters) uses a plethora of already-dated urban inside humor that reeks of pandering.

A disconnected series of skits and one-liners likely to satisfy children while only infuriating nostalgic adults in search of the magic of the Fifties sitcom.