Delta F Minus

Delta Farce. Bill Engvall, Larry The Cable Guy, Michael Edward Rose, and DJ Qualls star in a film written by Bear Aderhold and Tom Sullivan and directed by C.B. Harding.

There is something tragic about a comedy that fails, because it means what one group of people believed to be funny enough to write, film, and release-and spend millions of dollars in the process-does not match up with what anyone else considers even remotely funny. Fortunately, there are certain comedies that market a type of humor that, though they may not appeal to everyone, can find a loyal and sympathetic audience.

Then there is a film like Delta Farce. The film is so terminally unfunny, so poorly made, so desperately pathetic that watching it makes one uncomfortable and embarrassed. Delta Farce is a disaster of the first-order, a film that establishes itself as truly abysmal in its opening moments, and proceeds to do everything it can to savage this reputation with each passing scene. It is not just that the clunky editing and nonexistent gags of the film make one hope for better from an actor like DJ Qualls-who proved he actually had some chops in Hustle & Flow. This is a movie that is actually beneath the negligible charms of “Larry The Cable Guy,” so at least in that small way the magic of movies makes the impossible possible.

The most bizarre thing about Delta Farce is that its premise-three witless soldiers get dropped in a remote part of Mexico, but think they’re in Iraq-is somewhat ingenious, and manages to conflate two seemingly unrelated modern political issues, the war and illegal immigration. However, there is zero payoff to the satirical elements that seem self-evident in the story. Instead, viewers are treated to a narcolepsy-inducing third act in which the protagonists earnestly defend a village from bandits. I wish there was more I could say, perhaps a brilliant gag that was underutilized or a cameo appearance that functioned as a saving grace, but no-just scene after scene of mindless, pointless juvenile and scatological humor of the lowest order. Delta Farce didn’t make me sick, though; it just made me depressed.