Image courtesy of www.impawards.com
Director :
Trent Cooper
Cast :
Larry The Cable Guy……….Larry
Iris Bahr……….Amy Butlin
Megyn Price……….Jane
It can be said that you can determine what kind of humor a person has by merely asking which of the “Redneck Comedy Tour” someone appreciates the most. Both Jeff Foxworthy and Bill Engvall pontificate upon married life in suburbia as most of their shtick, so the particular audience for these two is most likely to be older and have children. Ron White mixes anecdotes about alcohol and drinking coupled with sex, capturing a slighter younger, drunker audience. Larry the Cable Guy, then, panders to the 13 year old in all of us with his “unique” brand of humor.
And in Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector, Larry and his humor come to the big screen in his own starring vehicle. In this outing Larry is a health inspector, inspecting restaurants and other dining establishments in his own way. Paired with a new partner in the rigid Butlin (Iris Bahr), Larry is tapped to investigate the poisoning of several trendy five star restaurants. Out to solve the mystery in time for a big cooking competition, Larry also has to try and successfully seduce shy waitress Jane (Megyn Price). And it’s a bit of a mess as a film, relying too much on the same joke over and over as opposed to trying to do something else.
The film’s main tenet is that jokes about breaking wind and bowel movements are the funniest jokes that can be made; thusly they should be in nearly every scene and make up 75% of the jokes involved. After a while it gets old to see and hear the same noises and motions. While this is the level of humor Larry The Cable Guy is known for, the notion that it’s the only thing he should be allowed to do as a comedian for his big solo debut is annoying to watch. Larry The Cable Guy has bits and pieces during his standup routine and in the film where he has some bits of intelligent humor, and they come out in the film on occasion, but too often it’s underscored by him breaking wing or otherwise having some sort of bodily function to elicit a laugh. He’s genuinely funny for the bulk of the film, admirably carrying a vehicle custom made for his style of humor but one that doesn’t translate as easily to the big screen. Larry is exposed a lot because the role isn’t as developed as it should be; this is a role designed more for a television audience than a movie audience and it shows. He works miracles with what he’s given, as he’s an absolute delight on screen for the most part, but this is a part designed for a television audience. There are times when a commercial break is needed for the cast so we can recover but without those the film flops around more often than not. Leave it to the supporting cast to try and inject some positives into the film.
There’s a lot of fun and laughter to be had with the film’s supporting cast. Bahr and Price have bits and pieces of comedic gold in the film interacting with their Southern star. There’s definitely chemistry between the three, as Bahr is a very capable straight man for some of Larry’s one liners and Price plays a functional romantic interest. While it’s hard to imagine a beauty like Price and a beast like Larry in reality, on screen they do have solid chemistry that makes it somewhat believable.
The film also has a solid, if predictable, plot and direction. The film is a buddy movie that tends to make Bahr a bit obscure in terms of screen time, and it follows the buddy cop comedy formula rigidly; this allows for some good pacing and story-telling by Trent Cooper. This isn’t a great comedy, or even a good one for the matter, but Cooper takes the wise route and minimizes what could’ve been a truly awful film and smartly directs it into being merely a bad one. It’s a testament to good editing and Cooper that the film doesn’t stay in certain segments for longer than they necessarily have to be. While many scenes drag on with the bodily function humor, and the film could have 30 minutes excised of running time without losing its basic story, Cooper has taken as much as he can with what little he has to fashion a functioning story out of it.
