Stax here with a look at the screenplay for The Honeymooners!

While there have been many obvious changes made for this contemporized version, "The Honeymooners" largely suceeded in capturing the thematic essence of the TV show. Working class New York bus driver Ralph Kramden (Cedric) has only been married for a few years to waitress Alice. He's always on the lookout for a way to get rich quick and his wacky sewer worker best friend, Ed Norton (Epps), is always there to help him get in (and out of) trouble. Alice and Trixie work together as waitresses at a diner.

Minor spoilers follow:

Like Ralph, Alice is a dreamer but she yearns for simpler and more realistic things. She is determined to buy the corner unit of an old, brick Victorian brownstone duplex that belongs to one of the elderly regulars at her diner. In order to accomplish this, Alice must come up with the twenty grand down payment necessary by the seller's deadline. But Alice isn't the only interested buyer. A slickster named Davis is out to snatch the property so that a Starbucks can be built there (this was reminiscent of the franchise beauty parlor moving in on the old neighborhood in Barbershop).

Ralph schemes to win the money not so much to help Alice -- he hasn't even bothered to see the duplex -- but rather to accomplish his dreams of reaching Easy Street. With "help" from Norton, Ralph tries two get rich qick schemes. The first revolves around what they believe is a solid gold railroad car that Norton found under the streets of New York; the second one involves a mangy dog named Iggy who becomes incredibly fast when given the proper motivation.

Ralph and Ed hope to win big at the track thanks to Iggy but, as anyone who has ever seen any sitcom or cartoon derived from The Honeymooners can tell you, things never quite go according to plan. Ultimately, Ralph must learn to put Alice's dreams ahead of his own. That's the barebones plot in a nutshell.

While the final film will likely adhere to the basic narrative provided by this amiable but routine draft, I assume the dialogue for Ralph and Norton will be changed to suit the styles and personalities of Cedric and Epps. Although this script wisely didn't employ much of Jackie Gleason's trademark schtick, the essence of lovable oaf Ralph Kramden remains much the same. He's still a working stiff who, despite all his shortcomings and bravado, is an underdog you root for. Alice remains the pillar of strength and spirit of the piece that she was in the original show.

Ed Norton is the hardest character to get a handle on. It's almost impossible to tell on paper how it will play. Art Carney will ALWAYS be Norton to me so it's tough to imagine Mike Epps in the role. This Norton is still none too bright but it was a little disconcerting seeing such a 1950s icon saying "ass" (granted, he could've said far worse). As long as Epps can capture the brilliant oddness of Norton while establishing his own identity apart from Carney then this character could work. As for Trixie, she was -- just as she sometimes was on TV -- a bit forgettable, more of a sidekick for Alice than anyone too important to the story.

The world of "The Honeymooners" is opened up more than we ever saw on TV. We see Ralph at work, get to know his multi-cultural ensemble of regular passengers, and even travel underground with Norton. By establishing their environment, the storytellers let us better understand the trappings that Ralph and Alice are constantly trying to escape from and yet we also understand why they're never too unhappy about staying there when they do fail.

The formula of the original Honeymooners has been aped now by countless subsequent TV shows, from the obvious Flintstones to The Simpsons. This script employed that same basic paradigm but how could it not? The question is whether audiences will accept these well-worn conventions because it's the grand-daddy of them all or if they'll reject the project as being cliche.

I've had more than one person ask rhetorically who the audience for The Honeymooners is since it's heyday was fifty years ago. I'm told the big-screen version has been urbanized in the hopes of reaching out to a new and broader, younger demographic. The gamble could work but the trick is to not disrespect one of television's most revered classics. This script went a long way in allaying my own fears about the project, that the filmmakers wouldn't "get" what the original show was about. Overall, I'm left feeling guardedly optimistic about this reinvention of "The Honeymooners". -- STAX

A remake to end all remakes