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BY TOM MEEK
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The popular ’70s Saturday-morning cartoon created and voiced by Bill Cosby leaps to the big screen. Beckoned by the tears of Doris (Kyla Pratt), a melancholy teen who’s lost her grandfather and not been invited to the big high-school party, Fat Albert and his gang of misfits jump (from cable reruns) through the TV and into the material world. Albert’s mission is to find Doris some friends, but meanwhile, back in toon land, bullies lay siege to the remainder of his crew in their junkyard hangout. The running joke, besides Albert as a super-sized spectacle in a weight-conscious society, is that the boys are still stuck in the ’70s. Confrontations with cell phones and the Internet, never mind rap music, provide easy laughs. As Albert, Kenan Thompson of Saturday Night Live is wrapped in gobs of padding, and he captures the "Hey, hey, hey," spirit of the genial fat kid with a can-do attitude. Otherwise, the direction by Joel Zwick (My Big Fat Greek Wedding) and the rest of the film, including Cosby’s sentimental appearance, is a thin bit of nostalgia. (93 minutes) At the Apple Valley Entertainment, Flagship, Harbour Mall, Holiday, Providence Place 16, Showcase, and Tri-Boro cinemas.
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