Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector

Hamlet its not.

Funny it is, in the lowest of the low sort of way. Its fart jokes (and worse) galore and if you hate them stay away.

The plot has Larry getting a new partner and being assigned the ritzy restaurant beat by the mayor. Of course its a set up and of course in the end Larry comes riding to the rescue.

The problem is that after about 15 or 20 minutes the laughs stop as the plot really kicks in. There are jokes after 15 minutes just not that many good ones, even of the fart related variety. Actually by the half hour mark the movie becomes rather dull in a been there done that, why aren't there more jokes sort of way. While I don't think that the movie is the worst ever made, it is a disappointment simply because it runs out of steam so early on.

Not worth paying for at any time, it is worth seeing when it finally makes it to cable where you can see the funny bits endlessly with out having to waste your money.

3 out of 10

Unlike the very first reviewer, I confess that I never played college baseball with Larry the Cable Guy at Boston College or anywhere else. I did have a pretty tough week this week, and in celebration of the fact that I work some long and crazy hours I did my every other week Friday Matinée movie expecting some really crude, baseless, and thoroughly stupid humor.

I was not disappointed.

Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector is a reasonably competent movie vehicle for Dan "Larry the Cable Guy" Whitney, allowing for the fact that it is rife with all the flatulent, politically incorrect, crude, redneck, and every other kind of socially unredeeming humor we have come to know him for within his solo stand-up and "Blue Collar Comedy Tour" career.

The whole crux of this film revolves around Larry's job as a restaurant health department inspector who happens to be offending virtually every one in his path and screwing up at his job. To correct his ways or end his career, he is allied with a new partner, the virtually hermaphrodic Amy Butlin (played by suitably hermaphrodic nerd-turned-comedienne Iris Bahr). What ensues is a caper in which Larry finds a love interest, belittles his partner, laughs at his retarded neighbor, abuses a phony paraplegic, wrestles a uni-browed daughter of a crooked restaurateur, degrades all manner of human life, all while trying to solve the case of serial food poisoning. We are also treated to what Jerry Mathers looks like at the end of his career and to what became of Thomas F. Wilson (remember Biff Tannen?) as if he actually had a career as a quasi-straight (don't you think that's funny, I called Biff straight?) guy for Larry's gaffs.

Sound interesting? Of course not, but every crude one-liner in Larry's repertoire (new and old) is balanced against a sometimes funny sometimes lame plot. There is enough of "Cable Guy" humor and off-beat timing to laugh at, even some things the P.C. police would send you straight to Hell for. Ample fresh material exists to keep the not-so-funny lines from keeping the average Cable Guy fan from disliking this movie.

Anyone expecting any more or less of Health Inspector is probably not a Larry the Cable Guy fan, and certainly should not see this film. If you are, however, and you just want to see about 90 minutes of absolutely insolent yet funny bathroom-style garbage disguised as humor, then by all means "Git 'er DUN" and see this film. It could be worse, of course, but comeonn….it's Larry The Cable Guy, NOT Shakespeare.

4 out of 10 for a comedy like this means it is B-style humor worth seeing if you understand the brand of humor being presented. I did take a shower afterward though.

Boy, was this film awful. I knew nothing about Larry, the Cable Guy until I clicked onto a preview on the web. The preview was hilarious! It was my type of low-brow humor and I thought this is going to be a funny film. However, after I go to the theater and the picture started to play, I felt I was really duped by the trailer. Whereas the trailer was tightly edited to give great timing to the jokes, the film was edited with no regards to proper timing of set-up and punch lines. There were even added scenes in the trailer that didn't exist in the film. This was one of those films that I had to leave early from. I could not take anymore after 40 minutes.

I played on a Baptist College baseball team over twenty years ago with Dan "Larry the Cable Guy" Whitney. Even back then he was only a part- time pitcher but a full time clown. I wish he had shifted his focus and concentrated more on his curve ball. If he had then perhaps we would have been spared his first feature length film---"Larry the Cable Guy Health Inspector".

As a "starter" project this movie echoes the transitions made by other comedians-- most notably Jim Carrey (Ace Ventura -Pet Detective) and less notably Rob Schneider (Deuce Bigelow-Male Gigolo). However Dan's talent is probably better compared to the late Jim Varney and his alter ego-- "Ernest P. Worrell". Still, I can much more appreciate Varney's eccentric talents than Dan's stubborn assault on our sensibilities by offering repeated renditions of a stock version of a crude redneck character(or has he broadened this into being somehow representative of "blue collar crude" in an effort to pull some of the population living north of the Ohio River into this movie's prospective demographic?)

In "Health Inspector" Dan manages to exhaust most of the material found in his stand up routine. He also comes up with some new bits- most of which are only incidental variations on his old bits. It's true that he does break some new ground also. We get to see Larry in love through an indirect appeal to pathos. But the sum total of this film, in the end, is that it serves as little more than a woeful compilation of "Larry's the Cable Guy's" rather sloppy rise into the national consciousness.

The touchstone for deciding whether or not you should give "Health Inspector" a chance can be found in Dan's signature stage utterance---"Git r Done". If the humor buried in that expression appeals to you ---then by all means check out the movie. But if the phrase leaves you lost, cold and empty---you had best give the film a pass. For my part, I have never been able to translate "Git r Done" into anything that quite registers as "funny" on my tired brain. But I still went and saw the show anyway. After all, like I said --I used to play ball with this guy in school.

As a fan of Larry the Cable Guy and the Blue Collar Comedy Tour, my husband and I really wanted to see this movie. As a matter of fact, when we heard the release date, we ensured to plan an evening around going to the theater to see this movie. I've enjoyed watching Larry the Cable Guy over the years and I knew that this movie would not be Oscar worthy, or one of the best comedies I have ever seen, but I thought it would at least be entertaining - but to our surprise, it wasn't. We were turned off within the first 10 minutes of the movie and forced ourselves to sit through the remaining 80 minutes. Usually, just hearing Larry talk is enough to make some laugh, but by the end of the movie, we even tired of that. Unfortunately, I think we will be a little gun shy in seeing any future Larry the Cable Guy movies, unless of course, , he is teamed up with the rest of the Blue Collar cast and he is doing his stand-up act. This movie isn't even worthy of watching on DVD, unless you want to hear fart gags for an hour and a half.