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'Witless Protection'

Rating: Zero stars

BY JOHN ANDERSON | Special to Newsday

5:03 PM EST, February 22, 2008

Making "Delta Farce" seem like Restoration comedy, "Witless Protection" brings back Larry the Cable Guy for what one can only hope is a last hurrah.

Given the dwindling White House approval numbers, the Obama-fication of the country (regardless of the election outcome), and what seems to be a growing atmosphere of intolerance for intolerance, there would seem to be a corresponding evaporation of audience for a movie so intent on appealing to people's worst instincts.

Of course, if it were actually funny we wouldn't be so quick to say this, but "Witless Protection" fails the Three Stooges test of finding hilarity in imbecility. When Deputy Larry Stalder spots federal witness Madeleine Dimkowski (Ivana Milicevic) being escorted through his one-gas station town by FBI agent Alonzo Moseley (Yaphet Kotto, who must have lost a bet) he immediately jumps to the inane conclusion that she's a hostage.

So he kidnaps her himself and spends the rest of the movie grossing her out, grossing us out, and somehow being proven right -- because, after all, anyone who uses the "Green Acres" theme as his ring tone obviously can't be wrong.

WITLESS PROTECTION (PG-13) Will you have a trailer park with that movie? Hick deputy kidnaps federal witness, uncovers plot, makes jokes about Muslims, blacks and women., The usual, in other words, from Larry the Cable Guy. With Ivana Milicevic, Yaphet Kotto, Eric Roberts. Written (sic) and directed by Charles Robert Carner. 1:37 (vulgarity, flatulence, misogyny, racism, sexism, excrement jokes). At, of course, area theaters.