For "Witless Protection," the rubber gloves are off for a full-cavity-search Larry the Cable Guy comedy that's more lowbrow, raunchier and yet a lot more ambitious than his first two "films," "Health Inspector" and "Delta Farce."

"Witless" is so weird it's almost a cult film.

It's still dumber'n a family reunion in the cousins-can-marry belt. But at least we've got the real Larry, the crude, redneck bigot that comic Dan Whitney has ridden to fame and fortune, if not yet ridden to death.

Larry plays a Deep South deputy sheriff who wears his uniform with the sleeves torn off and keeps a possum in his glove compartment. All he wants is to be sheriff or an F.B.I. agent. For reasons having nothing to do with reality and everything to do with creating a plot, he chases down a "damsel in "DEE-stress" and snatches her from the men in black with black sunglasses driving a black Suburban.

But they're the real F.B.I. And the special agent in charge (Yaphet Kotto) isn't happy about it.

Larry resolves to escort this witness, the vivacious Madeline (Ivana Milicevic), to the Chicago trial, because something about those agents just ain't right.

Larry is, of course, a character, and a character "type," so there's no sense getting offended when he confirms to Kotto's agent that something's true "in spades, nothing racialistic intended." But he's never far from the hog trough with this one, and the whole enterprise isn't funny enough to make the "Witless'" title anything other than truth in advertising.