Review in a Hurry: Larry the Cable Guy plays a small-town deputy named Larry who aspires to be an FBI agent. When a Suburban filled with Men in Black and ferrying Madeleine (Ivana Milicevic), a glamorous witness to an incomprehensible plot point, rolls through town, Larry believes he's witnessing a kidnapping and takes matters into his own hands by...kidnapping the witness. Sadly, the movie continues on after that point in witless, miserable, offensive fashion, with no protection in sight.
The Bigger Picture: Larry the Cable Guy isn't very funny. Perhaps to a small segment of society that doesn't really matter, because they're just happy to see this big, unfunny mass of redneck wisdom encountering the people they hate or fear or cannot understand (literally and figuratively) in the hope that he'll somehow put them in their place.
Or maybe that's just too deep. Maybe they just like seeing him vomit, be rectally examined and beat the rich at polo. Whatever the case, whoever these people are who spend millions of their hard-earned dollars watching his films, buying his DVDs and presumably attending his live shows, they'll find much to appreciate in Witless Protection, since all of the above occurs in the space of 97 minutes of tortuously bad filmmaking.
After coming to the absurd conclusion that the FBI has abducted the witness (an absurd conclusion that, naturally, ends up being absurdly right on the money, but for no reason that is ever explained), Larry and Madeleine race against the clock to get to Chicago. See, Madeleine has to deliver damning evidence against a criminal master genius (a lisping Peter Stormare) in a court of law while rogue FBI agents (led by Yaphet Kotto, reprising his role as Agent Mosely from Midnight Run in a sad, tragic, my-god-what-did-they-have-on-you sort of way) give chase.
Along the way, Larry gets to denigrate African-Americans (Kotto particularly, but not a single African-America is afforded even the slightest bit of respect), Middle Easterners (they are portrayed speaking like Yoda), liberals, homosexuals (played in a cameo by Joe Mantegna, who, hopefully, needed the money for a transplant) and the intellect of anyone within 500 yards of the movie theater.
Will Larry save the day? Will Madeleine be able to deliver the evidence? Will Madeleine fall in love with Larry, or will Larry come back home to his girlfriend (Jenny McCarthy, who must have thought she was in a sci-fi film)? These are the riddles that drive the film and will likely trouble the hearts and minds of America until Larry the Cable guy next takes to the silver screen.
Toss in numerous errors in continuity, a script filled with jokes using Who Wants to be a Millionaire? catch phrases, racism, sexism, jingoism and cinematography that uses old Benny Hill sketches as the bar of excellence and you have what might very well be the worst movie of 2008. And 2009. And probably 2010, too. Did we fail to mention the exploding farts?
The 180—a Second Opinion: In a twist that has the world's religious leaders scrambling to their sacred texts, at no point in the film did Larry the Cable Guy say, "Git-R-Done!"