LARRY THE CABLE GUY: HEALTH INSPECTOR

Here's one of those movies that it intended for fans only. Non-fans, like me, will watch the movie (if they are unfortunate enough to have rented it in the first place) and shake there heads with mute disbelief.

First of all, one small beef: If this guy's name is Larry the Cable Guy, why is he a Health Inspector? Shouldn't he be installing cable TV, or unrolling coils of cable at a construction site, or at least dealing with cable of one sort or another? But, I admit, I can get past this. After all, my state has a perennial political candidate who is named Mike the Mover, who apparently doesn't want to be a Mover anymore, but instead change his name to Mike the Mayor, or Mike the Senator. But I digress.

So you have Larry the Cable Guy, who plays himself, I suppose, except that he is a Health Inspector. The opening credits treat us to his morning routine. We get to see his impressive ass-crack (and this is the first view of many to come), we get to see him scratch himself, we get to hear some juicy farts (har har!), we get to see him piss in the shower (!!!), and of course do the knee-slapping routine of wondering what the mysterious things rotting in his fridge are.

Larry has a big-ass truck, with a refrigerated glove compartment of Eskimo Pies (the only thing I found remotely amusing in this whole movie), and he is a lone wolf in the Health Department when it comes to checking out greasy diners with badly computer-animated roaches pouring out of floorboards. When he reports in with his uptight boss, he finds out that he has a new partner: a small uptight woman with her hair severely pulled back and a gray Pee-Wee Herman suit. Of course Larry immediately calls his partner "boy", and this is apparently funny enough that is it worth repeating every time he addresses her.

The movie tries to spice things up with a scandal of food poisonings in fancy restaurants, a weird and sleazy mayor pulling strings (Joe Pantoliano, what the hell are you doing in this movie???), and of course a sweet and cute love interest for Larry (Joanna Cassidy). Now, I'd go on and on, but as you may guess, I didn't find any of this amusing, and worst of all I was completely bored. So much for my foray into the "other side"... trying to figure out what red state folks (and some blue state-ers, too, apparently) find funny. This is it? Maybe Larry's stand-up comedy bits are funny, but this stuff blows.

If you have patience, you can extend your joy by picking your way through the "Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector - Behind the Badge" featurette provided on this DVD, but are you at all surprised that I didn't bother?

[NOTE: A friend of mine was very excited about me reviewing this movie. When I told him that I didn't "get" it, he offered to write a review from a Larry-fan's perspective (which a movie like this sorely needs). But funny enough, my pal flaked out. He's probably peeing in the shower right now.]