'Witless Protection," the new Larry the Cable Guy comedy, is more lowbrow, raunchier and yet a lot more ambitious than his first two "films," "Health Inspector" and "Delta Farce."
"Witless" is so weird it's almost a cult film. But at least we've got the real Larry, the crude, redneck bigot that comic Dan Whitney has ridden to fame and fortune.
Larry plays a Deep South deputy sheriff who wears his uniform with the sleeves torn off and keeps a possum in his glove compartment. All he wants is to be sheriff or an FBI agent. For reasons having everything to do with creating a plot, he chases down a "damsel in DEE-stress" and snatches her from the men in black with black sunglasses driving a black Suburban.
But they're the real FBI. And the special agent in charge (Yaphet Kotto) isn't happy about it.
Larry resolves to escort the vivacious witness Madeline (Ivana Milicevic) to an Enron-ish Chicago trial because something about those agents just ain't right. A CEO wants her stopped.
Here's where the Cable Guy Cult thing comes in. They cast the great Swedish character actor Peter Stormare ("Fargo") as the CEO and then let him try an upper-class British accent. They hired Eric Roberts as his flunky, and let Roberts come close to cracking up. Joe Mantegna shows up as an in-law of Larry's with the strangest Southern accent this side of Selma. That's a cult film giveaway -- the serious actors treat it as a lark.
"Witless" gives Larry his first nude scene, not a pretty sight.
Jenny McCarthy plays his love interest, all cracker-speak and cleavage.
