Movie Reviews

Review in a Hurry:  Doesn’t anything go straight to video anymore? This “farce” concerns three hapless Army Reserve buddies (played, nominally, by Larry the Cable Guy, Bill Engvall and DJ Qualls) who, en route to deployment in Iraq, accidentally get dumped in Mexico. See, the three buddies are so hapless, they don’t realize they aren’t in Iraq. And, well, that’s the big joke. And when they eventually do realize it? Well, that’s not so funny either. About as entertaining as a barbed-wire catheter, except that at least you might get a mild sedative with that.

The Bigger Picture:  It’s never a good sign when two of the lead actors in a film, in this case Larry the Cable Guy and Bill Engvall, portray characters whose names are the same as their own. Nor is it a particularly good omen when, within the first five minutes of a film, two small, white children, dressed as Native Americans (replete with headdresses), attack a dark-skinned postman with golf clubs for no particular reason. And lastly, that it takes 25 long, tedious, I-wonder-what-I-ever-did-to-deserve-this-temporal-torture-of-the-human-soul minutes before the movie’s star, Mr. Cable Guy, utters his famous catchphrase—Git-r-done!—is probably a violation of the Short Attention Span proviso of the Geneva Convention.

In skilled hands, a satire of our current war in Iraq might have a chance to be at least passably amusing, though it’s fair to say that poking fun of abject real-life horror usually requires at least a few years' distance from actual events (like M*A*S*H, for instance), but that’s the least of Delta Farce’s failures.

After Larry (played by Larry) learns his girlfriend has been knocked up by a parolee, only his Army reservist buddies Bill (played by Bill) and Everett (DJ Qualls) can offer him solace. Fortunately, it’s their “one weekend a month” in the Army, in this case a backlot somewhere in Van Nuys where “Army” has been painted on the side of a wall. Unfortunately, the war on terror requires a few more good men in Iraq, so the Army sends in a cliché in the person of Sgt. Kilgore (played embarrassingly by Keith David) to grab the three men and prepare them for duty.

Hilarity ensues. Well, in a good movie, like Stripes, hilarity would ensue. Instead, four minutes ensue and then the threesome are off to Iraq. When they are accidentally dumped 500 miles outside of Mexico City, the men mistake the local Mexicans for Iraqis (“Turds” and “Shitites,” more accurately) and go on to liberate a small village being terrorized by the Mexican bandit...Carlos Santana.

There’s a developing love story. There are several shots of Larry (the character) that highlight the copious amount of hair he has crawling over his shoulders and onto his arms. There are plenty of gay jokes, Mexican jokes, Iraqi jokes and the kind of NASCAR jingoism that even ardent fans of Larry the Cable Guy will find deliriously unfunny.

Rare is the movie that can actually offend all corners, but this one does: Mexicans, Iraqis, Americans, the military, rednecks and the institution of American filmmaking are all equally shamed. Done as a three-minute bit during one of Larry the Cable Guy’s stand-up gigs, this might have been merely boring and stupid. As a movie, it’s an aneurysm.

The 180—A Second Opinion:  There’s some lovely aerial cinematography of the desert. And if word spreads quickly, this might be Larry the Cable Guy’s last movie, making your ticket stub a valuable keepsake for future generations.