PREMIERE.COM'S REVIEW (posted 5/14/07)

Imagine a handful of good ol' boys down at the megaplex. They buy tickets to Spider-Man 3, but accidentally stumble into the one auditorium playing something else. They're confused at first (isn't that spider guy supposed to be in this movie?), but it takes a full 45 minutes before the mix-up registers, and even then, they're having such a good time, they decide to stick it out.

It could happen. In whatever universe Delta Farce is funny, surely there exist a few stooges who might be pleasantly surprised to see the latest Larry the Cable Guy feature over anything else now in theaters. The movie, directed by Blue Comedy Collar Tour's C.B. Harding, is one of those celebrations of idiocy that never seem to go out of vogue: Three redneck Army Reservists played by Larry the Cable Guy, Bill Engvall, and DJ Qualls ("My last movie was nominated for two Academy Awards," the Hustle & Flow actor says in the end-credit outtakes) get shipped off to Iraq, only to be air-dropped in Mexico by mistake. Once there, the trio of inept "weekend warriors" waste no time before embroiling themselves in a local conflict, using their excessive firepower to scare off a gang of bandits headed by the fearsome Danny Trejo.

Every so often, Delta Farce veers away from lowest-common-denominator jokes (usually of the urine-drinking or "don't ask, don't tell" variety) and approaches the realm of genuine satire, only to recoil again briskly for fear of offending the brave men and women fighting in Iraq. But as morale boosters go, Larry the Cable Guy is no Bob Hope, and it's hard to reconcile the contradiction of an overtly tasteless movie that doesn't want to offend the troops (on the serious side, Sam Mendes' Jarhead ran aground of the same problem, trying to deconstruct the inanity of Desert Storm without besmirching its soldiers).

Could Delta Farce view its south-of-the-border shenanigans as an allegory for the unlawful invasion of Iraq? If so, Engvall's character shrugs it off with the line, "One man's international incident is another man's preemptive strike in the war on terror." Apparently, even military incompetence has its upsides. Since the local bandits fit the Bush administration's very loose definition of "terrorists," by all rights, Larry and his amigos are real American heroes for stopping them.

Now, a comedy needn't reinforce my personal politics to register as funny — I'm just as happy to see a movie lampoon the indignant anti-war crowd as take on the easy target of our Commander in Chief — but it should manage to crack some new jokes along the way (and confusing rival factions as "Turds" and "Shitites" simply doesn't cut it). Granted, the 10 or so paying patrons at a Saturday evening screening seemed to enjoy Delta Farce well enough, which suggests the very real possibility that we film critics really are as out of touch as the naysayers suggest. Then again, the other 300 empty seats echoing my mirthless reaction tell a very different story.

— Peter Debruge