Starring Larry the Cable Guy, DJ Qualls. Written by Bear Aderhold, Tom
Sullivan. Directed by CB Harding. (PG) 89 min. Opens May 11.
For the uninitiated – and this is not a cult worth joining – Larry
the Cable Guy is the foreigner-phobic alter ego of the Nebraska-born
comedian Daniel Lawrence Whitney. Larry is a trucker-hatted good ol'
boy who ostensibly drawls truth to power by denouncing rag-heads and
queers to appreciative, ever-swelling crowds (and before you get all
North-of-the-49th about it, he's appeared at the Air Canada Centre).
The blue-collar savant act has made Whitney a rich man. There's a lot
of money in playing to people's prejudices (just ask Sacha Baron
Cohen).
Whitney's first star vehicle was last year's Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector, which was, by all reasonable accounts, absolutely awful. Delta Farce, a vile, laugh-free Stripes
riff that oozes racism, jingoism and homophobia, makes it 0-2 with a
vengeance. This time out, Larry is an army reservist rushed into
service by “Pentagon pencil pushers” and accidentally airlifted into
Mexico. Unworldly dolt that he is, he assumes the sandy, desolate
locale is Iraq, and, along with his equally dim comrades, sets to
liberating the bewildered populace from “insurgents.” The film climaxes
with a rousing speech in which good soldier and passionate freedom
advocate Larry explains why, even though he's in the wrong place under
false pretenses, he refuses to cut and run. Five minutes of this
gruelling, hateful movie should be enough to convince audience members
to do otherwise.