Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector

I played on a Baptist College baseball team over twenty years ago with Dan "Larry the Cable Guy" Whitney. Even back then he was only a part- time pitcher but a full time clown. I wish he had shifted his focus and concentrated more on his curve ball. If he had then perhaps we would have been spared his first feature length film---"Larry the Cable Guy Health Inspector".

As a "starter" project this movie echoes the transitions made by other comedians-- most notably Jim Carrey (Ace Ventura -Pet Detective) and less notably Rob Schneider (Deuce Bigelow-Male Gigolo). However Dan's talent is probably better compared to the late Jim Varney and his alter ego-- "Ernest P. Worrell". Still, I can much more appreciate Varney's eccentric talents than Dan's stubborn assault on our sensibilities by offering repeated renditions of a stock version of a crude redneck character(or has he broadened this into being somehow representative of "blue collar crude" in an effort to pull some of the population living north of the Ohio River into this movie's prospective demographic?)

In "Health Inspector" Dan manages to exhaust most of the material found in his stand up routine. He also comes up with some new bits- most of which are only incidental variations on his old bits. It's true that he does break some new ground also. We get to see Larry in love through an indirect appeal to pathos. But the sum total of this film, in the end, is that it serves as little more than a woeful compilation of "Larry's the Cable Guy's" rather sloppy rise into the national consciousness.

The touchstone for deciding whether or not you should give "Health Inspector" a chance can be found in Dan's signature stage utterance---"Git r Done". If the humor buried in that expression appeals to you ---then by all means check out the movie. But if the phrase leaves you lost, cold and empty---you had best give the film a pass. For my part, I have never been able to translate "Git r Done" into anything that quite registers as "funny" on my tired brain. But I still went and saw the show anyway. After all, like I said --I used to play ball with this guy in school.