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“This is a movie that definitely strikes a note with the term “good-hearted.” It takes the characters from Bill Cosby’s Fat Albert TV cartoon from the nineties and magically depicts them popping from the TV screen into the life of a teenage girl who, hey-hey-hey, relies on their advice Toonsland.
High School student Doris, played by Kyla Pratt, is pretty and smart, but hopelessly lacks self-esteem and feels out of place. Tonight is party night for the rich kids (one of them has a father who is blocking off entire streets) but Doris couldn’t make the guest list. Technically, she was part of an invitation that was extended to her popular foster sister Lauri (Dania Ramirez), but that’s not the same.
On the way home, Doris turns on her TV and as she watches, shrinks with a single tear that falls into the TV shrinks around the screen creating a portal through time and reality. Strangers in the Philadelphia junkyard from “Fat Albert” could see a glimmering sphere behind them, which takes courage to jump through, which astonishingly transports them through Doris’s living room.
A lot of films integrate animated figures with the reals and some of these films include “Who Framed Roger Rabbit”, “Garfield: The Movie”, and “Space Jam.” In Fat Albert, cartoons take the form of real actors who closely resemble the characters from the show. This includes Kenan Thompson from Saturday Night Live who plays a chubby kid and puts on a costume that makes him appear as if he is a cartoon character. As the story closes, we learn that the characters are based on Bill Cosby’s childhood friends who he claims is the inspiration behind ‘Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids.’
Doris is faced with the dilemma of fitting in, and is not happy with being accompanied by people who look like Fat Albert or Dumb Donald. Similarly, these characters do not seem to enjoy being placed in a realistic setting where things function with logic as opposed to a cartoon.
They make an effort to step back into the screen, but the “Fat Albert” show has already ended, so they conclude that the magical portal opens only while the show is airing, which means they need to stay around for a full 24 hours. Sadly, the bright colors on their costumes appear to be dulling, as if they are starting to lose their fantasy.
Fat Albert has a crush Lauri, which is an awkward subplot. Dumb Donald makes a strange statement when he says that he wears a hood “because I haven’t got a face.” Plus, there are multiple scenes where Doris’ self-esteem is elevated by the Cosby Kids’ positive thinking, which she celebrates with her signature low-styled self-esteem “hey-hey-hey” instead of going all out.
The movie is gentle and sweet, but sort of dealing with issues like body image in a mild way . All but the very young watchers are likely to be looking for something more along with Fat Albert’s kind fostering of Doris.
And, as is my habit with this sort of plot device, I wondered why the human characters react with calmness to the appearance of toons. Doris is shocked when the Fat Albert gang leaps out of the television set, but doesn’t that action more than … shock? Isn’t it stunningly fantastic? Why, after all, when the boundaries of the physical cosmos as we know it are shattered, should it be aimed at anything less than shaking the planet to her core?
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