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To my surprise, I found this to be a very “good-hearted” movie. It takes the character of Bill Cosby’s “Fat Albert” TV cartoon show from the 1970s and pops him out of a television set into the life of a teenage girl—where, hey-hey-hey, he helps her out with strategies that have always worked for him in Toonland. The ways the cartoon characters are blown away by the real world are simply… ingenious, for example, they find out from a poster in a video store that they are on what you call a de-ved. But with all the standards that have been set for animated entertainment with the release of “The Polar Express” and “The Incredibles”, I think “Fat Albert” is quite far behind. It seems to be rather destined to someday find a home on de-bed, that is, return to the video world from where the characters claim they feel more at home.
Doris may be pretty and intelligent, but she lacks self-confidence as a high schooler and feels lonely. Her big foster sister Lauri was invited, so she did not get the invite to the party. She did get included in the invite thanks to her popular foster sister Lauri, but that does not mean she is truly invited.
As Doris is coming into the house, she turns on the TV, and with the single tear she sheds, she creates a portal to space, time, and reality. On “Fat Albert”, there is a scene where characters spot a glowing sphere in mid-air while in a junkyard. When they have the audacity to jump through it, they end up appearing in Doris’ living room.
While many films have placed animated characters into the live action scene, characters like Roger Rabbit, the cartoons still remained cartoons. In the movie Fat Albert, the cartoons are portrayed as real humans who are played by actors that bear a remarkable resemblance to the original characters. This includes Kenan Thompson from SNL who wears a full body padded costume and is transformed into a cartoonish version of a real-life overweight child. In one of the most touching scenes towards the end of the movie, we learn that the animated childhood friends of Bill Cosby who formed the bones of Fat Albert actually look just like the fat Albert and the cosby kids.
In the meantime, Doris who is concerned about her popularity isn’t excited at all about having Foreman Fat Albert, Mushmouth, Bucky, Old Weird Harold, Dumb Donald, and Rudy join her. Just like Doris, they didn’t seem excited about being part of the real world either, where life is far more complex than in a cartoon.
The pair attempts to leap back within the screen, but the “Fat Albert” show has ended. From this, they realize the magic portal can only be opened while the show is airing, meaning they would have to wait for a full day. Sadly, as if being stripped of their surreal nature, it seems the vivid hues of their costumes are beginning to lose their brightness.
There is a strange subplot in which Fat Albert has a crush on Lauri, a peculiar scene where Dumb Donald shares that he wears a hood because he ‘hasn’t got a face’, and numerous moments in which Doris’ self-deprecating attitude is countered by the positive thinking of the Cosby Kids, who offer her the trademark ‘hey-hey-hey’ chant.
The film is light, soft and sweet in nature, but rather unengaging. Most other viewers, aside from the younger children, would expect a tad more action fused with the kind approach Fat Albert provides to his encouraging of Doris.
And I was thinking, as I always do with plot devices such as this, why do the humans react so passively to the arrival of toons? Sure, Doris is shocked when the Fat Albert gang bursts out of her television but isn’t that situation more than just … surprising? Wouldn’t it be unbelievably awesome? Shouldn’t it be more earth-shattering than simply making Doris happy when the reality of the universe as we understand it is completely turned on its head?
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