Witless Protection

When I walk into a Larry the Cable Guy comedy, I expect a few things. I expect a lot of dumb redneck humor, a lot of bodily fluid humor, and a lot of unfortunate shots of Larry's exposed butt crack. His latest film, Witless Protection (and yes, the title is funnier than any of the jokes in the actual movie) takes things one step further. This is the first movie headlining the popular stand-up comic that I have found virtually unwatchable from beginning to end. I'm not saying that his past cinematic efforts like Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector and Delta Farce were good, but I'm also not exaggerating when I say I was thinking of bolting for the exit within the first five minutes. The only thing that kept me in my seat was the bizarre fascination to see if it could get worse. It did with each passing minute. If there's anything more uncomfortable than watching an awful comedy, it's watching an audience being subjected to an awful comedy. Just listening to the dead silence of a moderately filled theater clued me in to the fact that I was not alone in my hatred for what was being passed as entertainment.

In all of his movies, Larry is always the same character, just with a different job profession. I suppose Larry is supposed to be a sort of variation on the Ernest P. Worrell character that late comic actor, Jim Varney, made popular in the series of Ernest films back in the 80s and early 90s. The difference here is that the character of Ernest may have been a dumb redneck, but there was a certain sweetness to him and the desire to always do the right thing. The Larry the Cable Guy character is a racist, dim-witted, slob who seems too stupid to even want to do the right thing. He just stumbles upon doing good by accident. This time around, he's a sheriff's deputy in a backwater hick town who mistakes a woman under FBI witness protection as being kidnapped by crime lords. The woman in question is Madeleine (Ivana Milicevic), who is on the run because a crooked business tycoon named Arthur Grimsley (Peter Stormare, sporting the worst fake British accent ever captured in the history of film) is after her and some information she holds that could incriminate him. Larry doesn't trust the FBI agents escorting her, thinking they're crooked, so he snatches up Madeleine, and the two go on a cross country chase trying to figure out the truth behind the whole situation.

I really want to know who the Larry the Cable Guy character is supposed to be intended for. I have not seen much of his stand up act, but judging by his movies, his humor seems too juvenile and immature to appeal to any reasonably intelligent adult. But, I wouldn't even dare let a child watch one of his films, as every other thing out of his mouth is a sexual innuendo, or a play on a sex act. (The scene where he refers to an "evacuation" as an "ejaculation" is one of the film's more subtle and tasteful moments.) When he's not pushing the PG-13 rating to the limit with his constant talk of sexual acts, he relies on gross out humor, usually relying on farts, or other bodily fluids. The scene where Larry has to remove a key that he accidentally swallowed by projectile vomiting, then digging through his own puke to look for the key is the only scene that got a reaction from the audience at my screening, and it certainly wasn't laughter. I was never sure what to make of his character, as the movie keeps on sending us mixed messages. One minute, he's trying to help this Madeleine girl, and the next he's handcuffing her to a toilet. He's supposed to be a big, fat lummox who eventually grows on you, but all he did was make me want to never watch another movie featuring him ever again.

Writer-director Charles Robert Carner obviously didn't think Larry was reason enough to react in disgust, so he adds a couple other things into the mix to ensure watching Witless Protection is as painful as humanly possible. There's a chase scene fairly early on between Larry and the FBI agents at a pig farm that is shot in sped-up motion and handled so ineptly, I almost couldn't believe what I was watching. Everything is shot so amateurishly, and the performances so off, I was shocked that previous works popped up under Mr. Carner's name when I checked his credits on the IMDB. He drags some decent actors down with him as he mishandles each scene in this sinking ship of a movie. Aside from the previously mentioned Peter Stormare, the usually likable dramatic actor Joe Montegna pops up in an off the wall cameo as one of Larry's cousins - a redneck mad scientist with a passion for obese women. Montegna bugs his eyes out of his sockets and talks in a goofy voice, but he can't generate the slightest amount of personality or comic energy. He has shown an obvious knack for comedy, particularly when he pops up on the TV cartoon The Simpsons as the town's resident mob boss, but here he's working too hard for no reason.

Witless Protection is an absolute misfire in a way that few bad movies ever achieve. It lacks the slightest bit of energy, and it certainly hasn't been made with even the tiniest bit of thought or skill. It is a humorless, vile film that plunders the very bottom of the barrel, and then tries to scrape even lower than that just because it can. I will concede the fact that Larry the Cable Guy's stand up act is popular with many, but if this movie goes on to find an audience, I will lose hope in humanity's desire to be entertained. If there's a worst movie than this to come along in 2008, I don't want to see it.

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