Movie Review – Ernest Saves Christmas

Ernest Saves Christmas (1988)
Written by B. Kline and Ed Turner
Directed by John Cherry

Ernest made his film debut in Goes to Camp in the summer of 1987. By Christmas 1988, his second feature was in theaters. Ernest Saves Christmas is my personal favorite of the series. I think it understands some things about Ernest that many other films, especially the post-Touchstone movies, don’t seem to understand. Between these two films, we saw the airing of Hey Vern, It’s Ernest, a CBS Saturday morning kids show in the vein of Pee-Wee’s Playhouse. Varney played Ernest plus other characters, the cameraman as Vern was continued, and Chuck & Bobby were brought into the canon. This has all the elements you expect, which is why I was surprised as I watched the rest of the franchise and realized certain things like this is the only film Vern appears in.

Ernest P. Worrell (Jim Varney), a taxi cab driver in Orlando, picks up a man claiming to be Santa Claus (Douglas Seale). Santa says he has come to town in search of Joe Carruthers (Oliver Clark), a popular children’s television host so that he can become Santa’s replacement. Ernest & Santa cross paths with a runaway teen named Harmony (Noelle Parker), and they try to help her out as best they can. Santa tries to talk with Joe but is cut off by the performer’s agent, who has gotten his client a leading role in a Christmas horror film. Santa gets arrested as a vagrant, and Ernest & Harmony help him escape. In a race against a clock, the characters rush to get Santa, his sleigh, his reindeer, and his bag of toys in the right place to prove to Joe that he can become the next Saint Nick.

Notice how little Ernest there is in that plot. The character arcs for Santa and Harmony could efficiently work in a film without Ernest. I realized while watching & enjoying this movie for the nth time I’ve seen it that Ernest really isn’t a crucial part of the story. He adds some strong to middling comedy bits to an otherwise simple TV movie-level plot. The best parts of Varney’s performance are the Vern sequences and some character work he does pretending to be an employee of the governor. Ernest is essentially a supporting character in the picture, which is how he works best. That format has been used relatively often in classic comedies for decades. The Marx Brothers are the biggest name on the poster, but the story happens around them, and they add some humor to it.

This Ernest film was shot in Orlando at the then-under-construction MGM Studios at Disney World. This makes it one of the few in the series where the location is a real place and named. Typically, Ernest is found in a generic small town. It never felt like there was any friction between Ernest and the setting, which made me wonder why the series didn’t explore more notable locales like this. We will have the dreadful Ernest Goes to Africa later, but even then, that film keeps things generically “in Africa.” One has to wonder if, following the footsteps of the Muppets and Jason, Ernest had at some point “taken Manhattan” how that picture might have turned out.

You can see the increased budget on the screen compared to Goes to Camp. That first film was shot on location in Montgomery Bell State Park in Tennessee, which leads to every scene having a similar look to it – either the woods or a bunk. Goes to Christmas provides many more locations to visit – Vern’s house, Ernest’s cab, the Orlando International Airport, the children’s museum, the film set, etc. The increased variety of locations makes this feel like a significantly bigger production, and it is; the budget was increased by three million dollars. 

Two of my favorite side characters, Chuck & Bobby (Gailard Sartain & Bill Byrge), show up here. These two characters appeared in some of Cherry’s other regional commercials and were featured on the Hey Vern TV series. Cherry had initially wanted them to be in Goes to Camp, but Disney execs reportedly didn’t like how nasally Byrge spoke. They claimed he was hard to understand. With the success of that film, Cherry spent some of his cache with the studio and brought in these two plus the straight-to-camera Vern sequences. Because I was a fan of the show, this has always felt like the most Ernest movie because it has the most elements from the commercials and that series.

Ernest Goes to Christmas is not a masterpiece, but it proves how you make Ernest work on film. It’s not the only way you can effectively use the character, which we will see in our reviews of Scared Stupid and (shockingly) Goes to School. Of all the Ernest movies, I think this one best uses sentimentality. You can get away with sappy, feel-good stuff in Christmas movies because they have a reputation for that. Ernest is ultimately a very kind-hearted character, so having him team up with Santa to save the holiday is a perfect fit. Even the side plot with Harmony plays into the same sentiment as him being a counselor to troubled kids in the last picture.

There are genuine laughs here. It’s a sad reminder of how funny this film series could be but could never sustain. It would be a year and a half until the next Ernest film, Ernest Goes to Jail. At that time, Touchstone provided a $9 million budget, the second-highest budget in the series. In my previous review, I found Goes to Jail lacked the heart that something like Saves Christmas has in droves. One part of that is the decision to give Ernest a love interest, a trend that would continue sporadically and one I think is the worst idea brought to the franchise. The next film we will be reviewing is the most expensive in the series and one many fans say is their absolute favorite, Ernest Scared Stupid.