Witless Protection is a 2008 comedy film from Lionsgate, starring Daniel Lawrence Whitney, better known as Larry the Cable Guy

Larry the Cable Guy

Daniel Lawrence Whitney , better known by his stage name and character Larry the Cable Guy, is an American comedian, actor, and former radio personality....

 and Jenny McCarthy

Jenny McCarthy

Jennifer Ann "Jenny" McCarthy is an American model, comedian, actress, author, activist, and game show host. She began her career in 1993 as a nude model for Playboy magazine and was later named their Playmate of the Year. McCarthy then parlayed her Playboy fame into a successful television and...

 written and directed by Chicago

Chicago

Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

 native Charles Robert Carner. Whitney plays "Larry", a small-town deputy in Mississippi

Mississippi

Mississippi is a U.S. state located in the Southern United States. Jackson is the state capital and largest city. The name of the state derives from the Mississippi River, which flows along its western boundary, whose name comes from the Ojibwe word misi-ziibi...

. Many parts of the film were filmed in Plano, Illinois

Plano, Illinois

Plano is a city in Kendall County, Illinois, United States near Aurora, with a population of 5,633 at the 2000 census. The city is rapidly growing with new subdivisions such as Lakewood Springs completed and several other developments under construction or in the planning stages. Former Speaker...

 and Virgil, Illinois

Virgil, Illinois

Virgil is a village in Virgil Township, Kane County, Illinois, United States. It was incorporated as a village on November 6, 1990. The population was 329 at the 2010 census, up from 266 at the 2000 census....

 (train depot, farms, gas station and a few downtown restaurants). Filming also took place in numerous towns in Illinois

Illinois

Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...

 including Elmhurst

Elmhurst, Illinois

Elmhurst is a suburb of Chicago in DuPage and Cook Counties, Illinois. The population is 46,013 as of the 2008 US Census population estimate.-History:...

, Lombard

Lombard, Illinois

Lombard, "The Lilac Village", is a suburb of Chicago in DuPage County, Illinois. The population was 42,322 at the 2000 census. The United States Census Bureau estimated the population in 2004 to be 42,975.-History:...

, Lemont

Lemont, Illinois

Lemont is a village located in Cook, DuPage, and Will Counties in the U.S. state of Illinois, and is roughly southwest of Chicago. The population was 16,625 at the 2007 Special Census.-History:...

, Sugar Grove

Sugar Grove, Illinois

Sugar Grove is a far west suburban Chicago village in Kane County, Illinois, United States. The population was 3,909 at the 2000 census. The population was 6,016 in the 2003 special census. The population was 7,958 in the 2005 special census...

, Glen Ellyn

Glen Ellyn, Illinois

Glen Ellyn is an affluent village in DuPage County, Illinois, United States. As of the 2000 Census, the village population was 26,999.-Geography:...

, Vernon Hills

Vernon Hills, Illinois

Vernon Hills is a village in Lake County, Illinois, United States. The population was 20,120 at the 2000 census, and estimated to be 23,957 as of 2005...

, Westmont

Westmont, Illinois

Westmont is a village in DuPage County, Illinois, United States. Westmont is a community of six square miles in area, with a 2007 population of 26,211...

 and Yorkville

Yorkville, Illinois

Yorkville is a city located in Kendall County, Illinois, United States. The population was 6,189 at the 2000 United States Census and is estimated to be 16,505, . It is the county seat of Kendall County...

. The film was released in theatres on February 22, 2008 and was released for DVD on June 10, 2008.

Plot summary

The story centers on a small-town sheriff who witnesses what he believes is a kidnapping and rushes to rescue a woman. The kidnappers turn out to be FBI agents assigned to protect her and deliver her to a big Enron-type corruption trial in Chicago but are later found to be on the take and are villains who are bent on killing her.

Cast

• Daniel Lawrence Whitney (Larry the Cable Guy
  Larry the Cable Guy
  Daniel Lawrence Whitney , better known by his stage name and character Larry the Cable Guy, is an American comedian, actor, and former radio personality....
  
  ) as Larry
• Jenny McCarthy
  Jenny McCarthy
  Jennifer Ann "Jenny" McCarthy is an American model, comedian, actress, author, activist, and game show host. She began her career in 1993 as a nude model for Playboy magazine and was later named their Playmate of the Year. McCarthy then parlayed her Playboy fame into a successful television and...
  
   as Connie
• Joe Mantegna
  Joe Mantegna
  Joseph Anthony "Joe" Mantegna, Jr. is an American actor, producer, writer,director, and voice actor. He is best known for his roles in box office hits such as Three Amigos , The Godfather Part III , Forget Paris , and Up Close & Personal...
  
   as Dr. Rondog "Doc" Savage
• Yaphet Kotto
  Yaphet Kotto
  Yaphet Frederick Kotto is an African-American actor, known for numerous film roles , and his starring role in the NBC television series Homicide: Life on the Street .-Early life:Kotto was born in New York City, the son of Gladys Marie, a...
  
   as Alonzo Moseley
• Ivana Miličević
  Ivana Milicevic
  -Early life:Miličević was born in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina to a Croatian family, the daughter of Tonka, a homemaker, and Damir Miličević, a slaughterhouse worker and entrepreneur. She emigrated to the United States at the age of five and was raised in Michigan...
  
   as Madeleine
• Richard Bull
  Richard Bull (actor)
  Richard Bull is an American film actor, stage actor and television actor.He is best known for his performance as Nels Oleson, the kindly proprietor of Oleson's Mercantile and the long suffering husband of his wife Harriet on the NBC TV series Little House on the Prairie which aired from 1974 to...
  
   as Sheriff Smoot
• Eric Roberts
  Eric Roberts
  Eric Anthony Roberts is an American actor. His career began with King of the Gypsies , earning a Golden Globe nomination for best actor debut. He starred as the protagonist in the 1980 dramatisation of Willa Cather's 1905 short story, Paul's Case...
  
   as Willford Duvall
• Peter Stormare
  Peter Stormare
  is a Swedish film, stage, voice and television actor as well as a theatrical director, playwright and musician.- Early life :...
  
   as Arthur Grimsley
• J David Moeller as Elmer

Reception

This film received unanimously negative reviews from critics. As of December 19, 2010, the review website Rotten Tomatoes

Rotten Tomatoes

Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...

 reported that 4% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 24 reviews. Metacritic

Metacritic

Metacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...

 reported the film had an average score of 17 out of 100, based on 6 reviews.

Witless Protection was nominated for three Golden Raspberry Awards

Golden Raspberry Awards

A Golden Raspberry Award, or Razzie for short, is an award presented in recognition of the worst in movies. Founded by American copywriter and publicist John J.B. Wilson in 1981, the annual Razzie Awards ceremony in Los Angeles precedes the corresponding Academy Awards ceremony by one day...

: Worst Actor (Larry the Cable Guy), Worst Supporting Actress (Jenny McCarthy) and Worst Screen Couple (Larry the Cable Guy and Jenny McCarthy).