Leave-R-Be!

Larry the Cable Guy has his own movie.  I'll let that sink in for a moment.

That's right, Larry the Cable Guy (of all people) recently released his own movie--Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector.  In it, Larry becomes a health inspector who gets sent around to figure out why people keep getting sick at restaurants in town.  It's a blockbuster of a premise, and Larry pulls out every acting trick in the book. (He pulls a stunner by wearing green flannel instead of his traditional red.  You can hardly tell it's him.) However, nobody has informed me WHY Larry the Cable Guy deserves his own movie; it just happened.  If you're going to give Larry the Cable Guy his own movie, then at least balance the scales by giving some Norwegian Viking folk metal band their own movie (I imagine there's some sort of audience for that).

What saddens me the most is not the fact that Dan Whitney (Larry in real life) has created a character that personifies pure anti-intellectualism with the moronic catchphrase, "Git-R-Done," but the fact that people actually like this kind of stuff.

As an avid aficionado of comedy (and as an aspiring stand-up comic myself), it truly pains me to see comedy like this being the "in" thing.  It's because of people like Larry the Cable Guy that the current state of comedy is suffering.  Larry fans, Dane Cook fans, and Carlos Mencia fans all expect to be spoonfed humor that, most importantly, requires NO THOUGHT behind it.

The truly gifted comedians are the ones with actual substance behind the material--Bill Hicks, George Carlin, Lewis Black, to name a few.  The comedians that have a VOICE and a POINT-OF-VIEW are far better and funnier than people like Larry the Cable Guy.

So if you have an opportunity to see Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector, DON'T.  In the meantime, who wants to hear a knock-knock joke?