Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector

I saw this movie with my wife, 12 year old daughter & 13 year old son, it was on a Monday and there were 8 people total in the theater! (Should have been my first clue). The toilet humor was over done, while at times it fit the storyline, pissing in the shower was a little overboard and unnecessary. I loved Larry and gang on the Blue Comedy Tours, but this was raw sewage.

All the funny lines were in the T.V. commercial!

I did notice a major blooper. During one fresh scene (next day) and the few that followed it, the shirt of Tom Wilson had a large, wet stain on the pocket of his shirt - how did it get there and did we miss a cutting room floor funny?

Boy, was this film awful. I knew nothing about Larry, the Cable Guy until I clicked onto a preview on the web. The preview was hilarious! It was my type of low-brow humor and I thought this is going to be a funny film. However, after I go to the theater and the picture started to play, I felt I was really duped by the trailer. Whereas the trailer was tightly edited to give great timing to the jokes, the film was edited with no regards to proper timing of set-up and punch lines. There were even added scenes in the trailer that didn't exist in the film. This was one of those films that I had to leave early from. I could not take anymore after 40 minutes.

Tune into CMT or Comedy Central. Get the same jokes for free.

I'm a big fan of redneck humor. Jerry Clower is GOD.

But Jerry's real,born and bred.

This cable guy from West Palm Beach by way of Nebraska insults his fans.

I despise Jeff Gordon, whenever he pretends to be a good old boy.

Now picture Jeff Gordon in a flannel shirt, with cut off sleeves. Add about fifty pounds or so.

And get your authentic southern accent by watching the Simpsons cartoon character Cletus.

That's Larry. So long. I hope you enjoy playing Branson.

Hamlet its not.

Funny it is, in the lowest of the low sort of way. Its fart jokes (and worse) galore and if you hate them stay away.

The plot has Larry getting a new partner and being assigned the ritzy restaurant beat by the mayor. Of course its a set up and of course in the end Larry comes riding to the rescue.

The problem is that after about 15 or 20 minutes the laughs stop as the plot really kicks in. There are jokes after 15 minutes just not that many good ones, even of the fart related variety. Actually by the half hour mark the movie becomes rather dull in a been there done that, why aren't there more jokes sort of way. While I don't think that the movie is the worst ever made, it is a disappointment simply because it runs out of steam so early on.

Not worth paying for at any time, it is worth seeing when it finally makes it to cable where you can see the funny bits endlessly with out having to waste your money.

3 out of 10

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.