Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector

Just finished watching "Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector". He's sort of a cross between Ernest P Worrell and Andrew Dice Clay as far as his screen persona. And it's like the two basic influences are both on the same plate, spilling over from time to time from one to the other as the terrain gets rockier.

I must say, I like what I think is the basic character, the one(as long as we're talking about personality factions here)who just may be a cousin someplace of Ernest P Worrell. The big good-natured lummox with a seemingly inexhaustible supply of backwoods wisdom, all delivered in a heavy Cracker accent. If there was ever Berlitz for rednecks, they'd definitely want to enlist none other than Larry the Cable Guy: language consultant.

So the basics are all there: appearance, delivery- but then the terrain shifts, the plate tilts, and the Diceman starts to spill over into the mix. Actually Dice was more directly contentious- Larry has a different approach, wherein he'll "attack" and then fall into so-called contrition(Lord forgive me for that one..),then repeat the pattern, sidling up in an approach-and-retreat sort of sidestep.

What I'm referring to, in Larry's case, is the stuff about wheelchair-bound folks and folks with significantly-below-average intelligence. As far as the political correctness thing going on here, let me just say that I could give a rat's "turd-cutter"(thanks for that one, Lar': one of the lines in the movie)about political correctness. It's just so much punctilious horseshit as far as what we're supposed to call somebody, and how we're supposed to feel or behave.

The issue is more that you just don't pick on folks who can't fight back. If done in real life, it prompts others to whomp your stoopid ass en masse. If done in your act as a comic, it can seriously impair your effectiveness, maybe even give you a nice long vacation.. Don Rickles was perhaps the founding father of the kind of contentious, in-your-face approach to comedy as practiced by Larry the Cable Guy and the early Diceman. But he always picked on the big guys, never the little guy. Which is why he's lasted all these years..

So, please, Lar'. Leave the wheelchair and "retard" stuff out and you'll be fine. Besides, on the road to smarts, you ain't all that far ahead of 'em yourself there, whistledick...

Okay, aside from those parts of the movie, it was very funny. He has this little gal(Iris Bahr is the actress's name)as his sidekick/partner, who's very perky in a way reminiscent of Zelda Gilroy from the old Dobie Gillis show, an intense little firecracker of a brunette. She's the uptight/anal-retentive foil to Larry's relaxed good-ol'-boy, always with her clipboard and pen and crisp efficiency- while Larry applies his particular brand of 'country wisdom' to each sitch-e- a-shun..

Larry's boss is the guy who played Biff in the Back to the Future trilogy(Thomas F Wilson), and is a more congenial sort in this show, though he does get miffed(and in a Bifflike way)at Larry from time to time. Well, who wouldn't?

And Larry has a love-interest in this one. Nice cute, fairly voluptuous gal he meets out at the Mall. On their first "date", he gets indigestion which brings out some pretty raunchy farts, then an emergency trip to her bathroom to take a monster dump, and then--oh, sorry, I'm giving away some of the plot here...

So, except for the 'funny retard' and the 'funny guy in the wheelchair', a pretty funny movie in itself. Maybe in "Health Inspector 2", he'll be married to his love interest from this movie, and you'll see dried tobacco spit running down both sides of the Larrymobile.

Hopefully he'll bring back Iris Bahr as his sidekick. She has a nice comedic style and is also, in the considered opinion of one Smithton Wahling-Rumply, cute as hell.

I was getting a little crush on her watching this movie. Hmm, Iris Wahling-Rumply-Bahr. Might work..