If you have to look at the rating I’ve given this movie to figure out that it deserves the lowest possible score, you just might be dumb enough to somehow enjoy the film. Even if that were the case, I would still tell you to avoid it at all costs. Should you decide to go see it anyway and find that it doesn’t completely insult your intelligence, that might be a good sign that you didn’t have any to begin with. I wish I could say that was the only thing being insulted by the film, but regrettably it goes on to backhand the men and women of the American armed forces. It’s not just stupid, it’s offensive.
I used to believe that the worst person to ever be unleashed on a major motion picture was Carrot Top. That thought is being challenged by Larry The Cable Guy. The one-trick-pony, red-neck comedian teams up with long time Blue Collar comedy partner Bill Engval and so-skinny-it’s-scary Hustle and Flow star DJ Qualls to stitch together round after round of painfully obvious jokes. The gags themselves aren’t really enough to make up an entire movie so first time screenwriters Bear Aderhold and Tom Sullivan had to come up with a plot, or at least something they could try and pass of as a plot. Apparently unable to come up with anything they decided to rip off a much better movie.
Larry (The Cable Guy), Bill (Engvall) and Everett (Qualls) are part of a Georgia Army Reserve unit that was sent to Iraq. The three somehow managed to avoid being shipped out but they still show up on base for their “weekend warrior” hours which generally consists of shooting stuff with shotguns and making beer runs. When their little secret is discovered they’re sent through a ridiculous three day training montage and then packed off on the first plane to Fallujah.
Bad weather during the flight forces the pilot to dump his cargo, which just happens to include the idiot trio who snuck off into one of the humvees to sleep. Upon waking, the guys discover they’ve been dumped in the middle of the desert which they mistake for Iraq. Instead they’ve ended up in the deserts of Mexico. I’m not sure how Mexico figures into a flight plan between the United States and Iraq but screwy geography isn’t the biggest problem the movie faces.
Once the guys figure out they’re in Mexico they decide to attend to their soldierly duty of “spreading freedom and democracy” by helping out a small village. The villagers are plagued by an evil bandito named Carlos Santana (Danny Trejo) who raids and pillages from time to time when he isn’t too busy with disco karaoke night at the hide out. The rest of the story more or less plays out like a red neck version of The Three Amigos taking the occasional break to make a joke about the Carlos Santana name or to give Larry the chance to toss in his tired trademark line “git ‘r done”. I don’t care who you are, it’s just not funny.
With the United State military serving under extreme circumstances around the world, it’s perhaps not the best time to make a military comedy. But even so, there are hundreds of ways it could be done without being offensive. Wartime or not, this movie smacks of complete disrespect for a military that works hard to do their job, which is particularly difficult since they don’t get to pick what job they do. Whether or not you like the current politics of the White House, I would hope you could agree that the armed forces deserve some respect for their efforts. It's not just the moronic starring trio, but most of the soldiers in the movie are portrayed as dopes and their fervor for the military generally comes across as lunacy. The biggest blow comes at the end when the credits actually dare to say that the movie is dedicated to the hard working men and women of the armed forces.
I’ll freely admit that I’ve watch the “Blue Collar Comedy Tour” and even laughed a few times during. But the format just doesn’t work when you try to translate it out of the trailer park. Add on that the plot is ripped off and the jokes are insipid and you end up with one of the fattest wastes of screen time since Larry’s last movie. I’d usually stop at saying that the filmmakers of such a pile of crap should be ashamed, but in this case I would add that they owe a lot of people an apology, and not just the audience.
