By Geno McGahee
Ernest (Jim Varney) looks just like my aunt. I could end the review here with a positive one because I’m always amused looking at Ernest and thinking about my aunt. Isn’t that a cool thing when a relative looks like a character you see on TV or in a movie? It just so happens that most of my relatives look like strange characters because they look strange to begin with. Why my aunt never went into Ernest impersonation is beyond me.
The Ernest character was picked up by Disney and they ran four films, including ERNEST GOES TO CAMP, ERNEST SAVES CHRISTMAS, ERNEST GOES TO JAIL and this one. They were all successful but they made less and less money, forcing Disney to pull out of the deal. ERNEST SCARED STUPID was made on 9.6 million and made just over 14 million, making it a disappointment and considering that ERNEST RIDES AGAIN, the next movie, was made on 5.5 million and lost 4 million at the box office, it’s safe to say that Disney made the right call.
Ernest is a garbage man and he’s not very good at his job. Mayor Murdock (Larry Black) isn’t a fan of Ernest or his job performance and constantly argues with the Sheriff. The Sheriff tries to help Ernest the best he can and even lets his son, Kenny (Austin Nagler), hang out with him. Remarkably, Ernest only hangs out with children and that seems very odd. I am not accusing Ernest of being a diddler or saying that they had plans to make ERNEST GOES TO JAIL AGAIN FOR BEING A MOLESTER, but I would have reservations about letting my young children hang out with an adult man that acts so strangely.
The sheriff dispatches Ernest to Old Lady Hackmore’s (Eartha Kitt) house to get her to clean up. It looked like a house from that show HOARDERS, but without the cat feces everywhere. Hackmore isn’t a fan of Ernest, knowing that his ancestors put an evil Troll, Trantor (Jonas Moscartolo) to rest and that he will be the one that releases him, according to the legend.
Elizabeth (Shay Astar), another kid that hangs out with Ernest, does a report in class about trolls and the history of the town and gets mocked by the Murdock boys, the bullies, and you know they are bullies. Gregg Murdock (Steven Moriyon) is the fatter one with the bigger mullet. They have mullets and are overweight. When I was in school, my bully was overweight and had a mullet too. I checked out his Facebook. He’s even more of a tank ass now. I think he’s beyond his bullying years. He may just ask me to buy him a box of those Little Debbie Nutty Buddies.
Kenny has a thing for Elizabeth and does a John Wayne impression. I hated that fucking shit in SHORT CIRCUIT and I hated it here. NOBODY has ever done a John Wayne impression to impress a chick. EVER. I can’t imagine going on a date and doing a John Wayne impression and winning her over.
The kids ask Ernest to help them out and he agrees. They go deep into the woods and build a huge tree house to combat the Murdocks and it works. When they attack, the trio uses pizza and dog food launchers to blast them. Unfortunately, the construction of the tree house awakens Trantor and he is now loose and is taking kids and turning them into statues.
Trantor talks to himself a lot. He says “wake up my children” while making more trolls, which sort of makes sense, I guess. Maybe they can hear him as they develop, but then he notes “one more and the cycle will be complete” as he starts collecting the statues of the children. Trantor is alone and I often talk to myself when I’m alone. So, I guess it does make sense.
Nobody believes Ernest that there’s a deadly troll on the loose, which leaves everything up to him to try to stop it. The scenes where Ernest literally fights the troll are pretty funny. He teams up with a couple guys that run a store and they just don’t work. The humor just isn’t there and they sort of take away from the film, but they aren’t in it enough to be an annoyance.
Hackmore and Ernest team up and discover that the Troll has one weakness, but Ernest screws that up. Kids continue to be turned into statues and the troll even got Ernest’s dog, Rimshot. That infuriates Ernest and sets up the finale of Ernest VS. Trantor. Kenny and all of the kids join the battle, armed with milk, the only thing that can defeat Trantor and his army of trolls that he unleashes.
ERNEST SCARED STUPID is a funny movie with some humor working while other attempts don’t. At one point, Hackmore uses a huge can opener to try to get Ernest out of a can and that shit is never funny. The stuff that is funny is the writing and lines they give Ernest. He is defending why he’s not doing his job as a garbage man and notes that he “took a cold pill and can’t operate heavy machinery.” When he does different characters to explain to Kenny about fighting bullies, there are some funny moments there and some not so funny, but the good outweighs the bad.
I found myself laughing more than I expected. I didn’t really think that this would hold up as well as it did, but it does. The times he fights the trolls has a lot of funny moments. It’s cartoon violence and meant to be stupid humor and it is and it’s funny.
I highly recommend ERNEST SCARED STUPID. It’s very stupid, but sometimes stupid can be really funny.
