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Witless Protection
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray ALL - America - Lions Gate Home Entertainment Review written by and copyright: Pat Pilon (27th June 2008). |
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The Film
 The funniest thing in this entire movie is listening to Peter Stomarre attempting to speak (and managing to mangle) a British accent. Protection of the witless should definitely be a requisite after watching this movie. After seeing this and 'Meet the Spartans' in the same week, in the best Homer Simpson style, I'm about to go punch my television until it becomes more funny. The movie stars Larry the Cable Guy as a sherif's deputy, who kidnaps a blonde (Ivana Milicevic) from the FBI agents (Yaphet Kotto and others) that are protecting her. See, the thing is that he thinks they're trying to kidnap her, and he wants to save her. He dreams of becoming an FBI agent and he thinks this is his chance to snuggle up to the bureau. After about 26 minutes of this I wanted to beat my television until it became more funny. Larry is stupid, bigoted, racist and ignorant, and usually characters like this get to change to become a bit more tolerant, but in this movie the characters that populate it alter to flex to him. Whether he turns out to be right not is actually beside the point; his stubbornness and unwillingness to change shouldn't be rewarded in the first place. This movie has a lot of racist jabs, pop culture reference jokes and tons of fart jokes. His misuse of words is simple and nothing he says is funny at all. With quips like 'My hand hasn't been this sore since the first episode of 'Baywatch'', and this repartee, Madeline speaking first, 'I'll go incognito.' 'You gotta wear underwear.' ... you wonder why scripts like this get greenlit, and you wonder why people like Whit Stillman aren't making movies anymore. I can't imagine who would find these jokes funny. Even the people that enjoy this humour have probably seem things like these before, and so nothing in this would be creative of funny for them. I mean, 'Is that your final answer' had already been done to death by 'Who Wants to Be A Millionare?''s fourth episode. When I was in 7th grade, I was walking across the school yard during lunch period, and I saw a couple of students throwing a football. One of them caught a solid throw, mock-yelling in pain, making his friends laugh. I thought to myself that it wasn't funny, because it had been done so many times before. Then I thought that maybe they hadn't seen that before, and by the same token, that some of the jokes I made weren't funny for the same reason. It was at that moment in my life that I realised that humour was relative. This means that someone in this world will find this movie funny. Scratch that. I think I'll just go club Larry the Cable Guy until he becomes more funny.
Video
1.85:1 widescreen, using the MPEG4/AVC codec. The picture here is just passable. It's better than Lionsgate's own 'Delta Farce', but it's still far from perfect. The print is clean of defects, like specks and scratches. The colours are okay, but the black level wavers from shot to shot and the print looks pretty dull at times. The print also has slight ringing a few times and seems a bit soft for what blu-ray can offer. Overall, it's a good transfer, but nothing special.
Audio
There are 2 English tracks, a DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 and a Dolby Digital 5.1 EX track. Although I appreciate the fact that Lionsgate includes a full 7.1 lossless track, it seems a bit pointless. This isn't '3:10 to Yuma', after all. The surround and rear speakers don’t do anything throughout the entire movie, except for perhaps one or two bits of score. Even the separation across the front isn't the most natural. Everything seems to be stuck in the centre speaker. Now, most of the movie is talk, so this isn't too much of a problem, but there are plenty of missed mixing opportunities. The dialogue is always clear, though, which makes for an okay track. English and Spanish subtitles are here.
Extras
The extras on this disc are actually more entertaining than the movie, which doesn't happen all too often. First up is the Making Witless: The Cast on the Cast featurette(12:13). This is pretty interesting. Whereas most 'making of documentaries' have the cast praising each other endlessly, this disc has a featurette where the cast is supposed to talk about the other cast members. To be fair, this is pretty interesting. The featurette takes turns with various actors and the rest of the cast talk about him or her. There are some nice stories from the set here, and you’ll probably laugh once or twice. Larry's Use of the Analogy (5:41) is next and this feaurette is about Larry the Cable Guy's use of language in the movie. Of course, you know my feelings on that, and here Mr. Cable Guy talks about why he uses the colourful language and its origins. In The Musicians of Witless Protection (11:11), Peter Stomarre talks about his band and how he ended up singing a song in the movie. Likewise, the other singers talk about their bands, their music and how they got involved in the movie. The rest of the extras are high-def exclusives. In A Cast of Critters (2:55), Jenny McCarthy showing you all the pets Larry the Cable Guy own in the movie. There are a few funny stories about this, and you see a few behind the scenes shots. It’s a fun featurette. The last featurette is Die Laughing! (3:21), and is about Ivana Milicevic's 'death' scene. She talks about acting dead and trying to stay that way even though Larry the Cable Guy kept saying silly things to make her laugh. The story is pretty funny here. The Witless Blooper Reel (3:19) is good for a few laughs. It's basically what you expect, has a lot of goofing off by Larry the Cable Guy, and some flubbed lines and such from other actors. The Deleted/Extended Scenes (2:45) honestly don't add anything. They just seem to be Larry the Cable Guy goofing off on set and I really wonder why they were even filmed. Maybe they should have been put in the previous section. Also from Lionsgate has trailers for 'Delta Farce' (2:05), 'Good Luck Chuck' (2:19), 'Employee of the Month' (2:00) and 'Rambo' (1:00). These are also start-up trailers. Disc Production Credits finish everything out.
Overall
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