Larry The Cable Guy's Witless Protection is not the worst movie I've ever seen. In fact, I'm sure at least four or five less watchable motion pictures will be released sometime this year, but I can guarantee none of those debacles will sweat the same musty, stereotyped musk this racist, cliched cinematic cancer does. Outside of Soul Plane, I have never seen a film more reliant on recycled ethnic punchlines. It reeks of redneck-on-redneck crime. It's not that I'm against self-deprecating humor. Far from it. I love Woody Allen and his working title for Annie Hall was It Had To Be Jew, but when the entire script amounts to one big fuck you aimed at its own white trash target audience, it becomes hard to force a smile.
Larry Stadler (Larry The Cable Guy) is a hapless sheriff's deputy who dreams of becoming an FBI Agent. Rather than seeking out formal training to accomplish this goal, he sits on his ass in Flo's Main Street Diner and complains about al Queda with his three stock, underdeveloped hillbilly buddies. His girlfriend (Jenny McCarthy) is clearly out of his league, but it's never discussed on camera because well, the added dialogue might have forced the director to remove some hysterical “mallard calls sound like farts” dialogue. Oh the humanity! One day a blonde bombshell walks into Maybary South (or whatever the hell this town's name is) with four Secret Service Agents, and Larry decides the damsel must have been kidnapped. Naturally, he kidnaps her to protect her from the kidnappers who may or may not have actually kidnapped her, and those same kidnappers spend the next hour trying to track down the kidnap victim who was only kidnapped to get her away from the original kidnappers. Who's on first again?
Perhaps the saddest part of all this (other than the hour and a half stolen from my life) is, at times, Witless Protection actually has the potential to be funny. There's some nice references to Patty Hearst and even a shoutout to Longshanks, but all of these amusing treasures are buried beneath obvious lines about Baywatch causing tired hands and ferrets being kept inside glove compartments. There's even some unoriginal banter about saying "gun" inside an airport and a snobbish, upper-class white guy for Larry to contrast himself against.
Let's be honest, if you're the type of person whose interested in seeing this film, Cinema Blend's review will not dissuade you from going. You'll peg me as an elitist prick who just doesn't get blue collar comedy, but that superficial assumption would be way off base. I think people falling down is hilarious. I even chortle whenever someone farts in an inappropriate situation, but bodily functions and pratfalls aren't funny by themselves. It's the context surrounding someone getting an anal cavity search which makes it worth laughing at. If anyone associated with this movie would have even spent five minutes scrounging up a reason for me to give a shit, I might have actually bothered taking notes after the first twenty minutes.
Witless Protection is a bullshit, bush league effort. I would never in a million years advise even my most hated enemy to waste his time on this putrescence. It's an absolute crime groundbreaking, progressive scripts go unfunded, and reused garbage like this gets a hearty budget. Shame on everyone involved. This was nothing more than a phoned-in waste of time, but let's be honest, we all know ignorant Bible Belt assholes will show up and guffaw. Not because it's funny but because they feel like it was made for them. Maybe someone with some talent with set their sights on making a watchable lunch pail comedy in the future, but until that day, Larry The Cable Guy will continue slandering the world with D- efforts like this. And surprise, surprise a certain buck-toothed, slovenly demographic will continue showing up. Now, if that ain't sadder 'en a hungry mule with a missin' bucket of slop, I ain't know what is.
