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entertaining u newspaper: your weekly guide to entertainment
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Georgia Rule
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by rick grant rickgrant01@comcast.net
C+ Rated PG-13 90 min
Thanks to the television series Blue Collar, comedian Larry the Cable Guy emerged as a meta-star, selling out big time auditoriums and appearing frequently on Jay Leno’s Tonight Show. Larry created the quintessential slovenly red-neck character with his hilarious monologues and likeable manner. His material is original and always funny. People in all socioeconomic groups love Larry, especially the down-home folks he sends up.
In this homage to Gomer Pyle, directed by Blue Collar’s CB Harding, Larry and his cohorts, Bill Engvall, and DJ Qualls portray a trio of screw-ups who are members of an Army reserve unit that somehow dropped off the Pentagon’s radar. The trio’s one-weekend-a-month duty is more like a day camp for beer drinking yahoos than a serious military training facility. But that all changes when Sgt. Kilgore (Keith David) shows up to whip these numb-nuts into fighting machines bound for combat duty in Iraq.
David almost steals the movie with his loud-mounted drill sergeant shtick. The trio is loaded aboard a cargo plane along with their vehicles and other equipment. During the flight, Larry and the gang decide to sleep in the Humvee. Ah yes, but the plane runs into a bad storm and the pilot decides to dump the cargo with Larry and pals still sleeping in the vehicle. Sgt Kilgore tries to stop the dump but gets sucked out of the plane clutching the equipment.
When the Iraq bound greenhorns wake up they think they are in Iraq, but they have landed in the Mexican desert. Thinking Sgt. Kilgore is dead, they bury him and set out to make contact with the enemy. And thus begins the trio’s adventures in a Mexican village under siege by a vicious gang of bandits, who they think are insurgents.
Yes, it’s a dumb premise, but there are intermittent laughs as the Army’s worst soldiers find themselves saving the village and becoming heroes. Odd looking DJ Qualls is the kung-ho member of the trio who yearns for blood letting. Larry the Cable Guy as Larry the soldier plays it mostly straight, uttering a few guffaw producing lines. But it’s Keith David as the hardcore Sgt Kilgore who gets most of the laughs. Of course, Sgt Kilgore wasn’t dead and emerges from his shallow grave to go in search of his men after seeing the sign “Mexico City 500 miles.”
Not only is this movie ridiculously predictable, but it doesn’t deliver the anticipated laughs that viewers would expect from a film starring Larry the Cable Guy. However, Larry is playing a different character from his Cable Guy persona in an ensemble cast. In other words, he doesn’t hog the spotlight.
To me, Larry’s stand-up material is clever and consitantly funny. More importantly, he has an intrinsic sweetness about him that appeals to just about everyone. This is not a memorable comedic film, but it has its moments. Recently, when Larry was on Jay Leno with Scarlet Johannson, she played along with him and enhanced his act with her feigned shock revulsion. Larry’s only problem is overexposure and appearing in a succession of mediocre movies. But with Larry, what you see is what you get–a few beers, a fart, and funny red-neck jokes.
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EU Critic’s Choice Awards
