Seth Harris

Movie Review – Ernest in the Army

Ernest in the Army (1998)
Written by John Cherry, Jeffrey Pillars, and Joseph Dattorre
Directed by John Cherry

Just less than two years after Ernest in the Army’s release direct-to-video, Jim Varney passed away from lung cancer at his home in White House, Tennessee. He recorded dialogue for Disney’s Atlantis: The Lost Empire and played a small role in a Billy Bob Thornton film. His career as Ernest ended in a downturn. Varney consistently adhered to the transparency that they made these movies because they made money. There was never a faux sense of artistry. Varney also seemed to understand how important characters like Ernest were for kids. That makes the previous film, Ernest Goes to Africa, and this disappointment feels so out of place in the franchise.

Movie Review – Ernest Goes to Africa

Ernest Goes to Africa (1997)
Written and directed by John Cherry

The Ernest franchise felt like it was running on fumes at this point. It had been ten years since Ernest Goes to Camp. Touchstone/Disney were out of the picture. The films were no longer being released theatrical, going straight to video. Budgets were meager. The ideas were also drying up. When this film came out, I was sixteen, and I don’t have any vivid memory of watching it. Our family likely rented it for the younger siblings, and I was probably present, but I remembered very little of it. John Cherry was writing & directing solo now. Film production had gone from Tennessee to Vancouver and South Africa for these final two pictures.

Movie Review – Slam Dunk Ernest

Slam Dunk Ernest (1995)
Written by John Cherry and Daniel Butler
Directed by John Cherry

The final three Ernest films were direct-to-video releases, making it very clear that the salad days of Disney financing were long gone. It wasn’t a terrible move. As we can see today, theatrical release is hardly the primary way people engage with media. What would Ernest have been like in the streaming age? He’d likely end up on some platform like Pureflix, especially looking at these final three. If, in watching these movies, you think they resemble television far more, you wouldn’t be wrong. I can easily see these being cut way down and being episodes of a low-budget streaming series.

PopCult Podcast – In a Violent Age/The Bikeriders

One film deconstructs the tropes of the lakeside slasher genre of horror. The other follows the rise & fall of a motorcycle club in the 1960s/70s US Midwest.

Solo Tabletop RPG Review & Actual Play – Kids on Bikes Solo Part Two

You can purchase Kids on Bikes here.

You can purchase the Plot Unfolding Machine here.

Read our previous session setting up our game here.

Before jumping into our story, I want to talk about the tool I will use to make Kids on Bikes solo. I have chosen to go with Jeansen Vars’s Plot Unfolding Machine. I genuinely love the structures and tools Mythic GM Emulator and Mythic Magazine provide. However, they are more about creating frameworks but don’t prompt the story beyond a general direction. The Plot Unfolding Machine delivers a bit more guidance, and for the purposes of this game, I thought that would be a fun change of pace.

Comic Book Review – Batman: The Dark Knight Volume Four & The Caped Crusader Volume Two

Batman: The Dark Knight Detective Volume Four (2021)
Reprints Detective Comics #601-611 and Annual #2
Written by Alan Grant, Brian Augustyn, and Mark Waid
Art by Norm Breyfogle and Val Semeiks

Batman: The Caped Crusader Volume Two (2019)
Reprints Batman #432-439, 443-444 and Annual #13
Written by Marv Wolfman, John Byrne, James Owsley (Christopher Priest), and Kevin Dooley
Art by Jim Aparo, Pat Broderick, Michael Bair, and Malcolm Jones III

Alan Grant and Norm Breyfogle continued their run on Detective Comics with a series of multi-part stories. In The Dark Knight Detective Volume Four, we get four plus a novel-length annual. This creative duo was a case of being in the right place at the right time on top of being immensely talented. They were working on Detective as Tim Burton’s Batman was released. Sales on the title went from 75,000 a month to 650,000 with that film’s debut. Their success on Detective would follow them to the Batman title for a couple years and even garner a spin-off ongoing with Batman: The Shadow of the Bat in 1992. Eventually, we’ll get to that one.

Solo Tabletop RPG – Worldbuilding: The Location Crafter Part One

You can purchase The Location Crafter here.

For this session, I focused on the location details I rolled up in the last session with Random Realities. I used Tana Pigeon’s The Location Crafter, a spin-off of their Mythic GM Emulator engine to further develop these details into a playable space. Like all Mythic-related content, the Location Crafter is intended to be modular. A solo player can choose what they want to add to their core RPG system. In the case of The Location Crafter it is about creating an explorable space with lists. You’ll roll on these lists, adding a score for how much has been explored already, which enables items from lower on the list to be “unlocked.”

Movie Review – Ernest Goes to School

Ernest Goes to School (1994)
Written by Coke Sams and Bruce Arntson
Directed by Coke Sams

Amidst a sea of mediocrity (and trust me, it gets so bad with the last two films), Ernest Goes to School emerged as a decent watch. Part of this is likely because it’s the only Ernest film that was not directed or written by John Cherry. Instead, Cherry’s longtime writing collaborator, Coke Sams, was promoted to the lead position. The result is a film that resembles the previous films but adds some new ideas that Sams must have had rattling around for a while. The problem, though, is that Goes to School is two scripts that have unsuccessfully mashed together. There’s a script about Ernest playing football and one about him returning to high school.

Movie Review – Ernest Rides Again

Ernest Rides Again (1993)
Written by John Cherry and William M. Akers
Directed by John Cherry

This was the end of an era. The Ernest films lost their Touchstone financing post-Scared Stupid. It was the largest budget with the second-highest box office returns, which wasn’t too bad. Ernest Rides Again would be the last nationally theatrically released entry in the series, and the decline in budget is evident on screen. The previous film had been given a $9.6 million budget, while Rides Again clocked in at $3 million. As a result, this movie resembles John Cherry’s first theatrical venture, Dr. Otto and the Riddle of the Gloom Beam. What we get is a movie that is trying to be something of theatrical quality but ends up being the first of many slogs we have to get through.

Movie Review – Ernest Scared Stupid

Ernest Scared Stupid (1991)
Written by John Cherry, Charlie Gale, and Coke Sams
Directed by John Cherry

Of all the Ernest films, this is the closest we got to perfect synergy between a big Hollywood production and the particular sense of humor John Cherry & his collaborators shared. Every Ernest film had made more money than the last, which led to this being the highest budget Touchstone had ever given the production team, $9.6 million. Ernest Scared Stupid made less than Goes to Jail – $14 million compared to $25 million. This was also the final film handled by Disney, fulfilling the original four-film deal that started with Ernest Goes to Camp. Scared Stupid would mark the end of an era for Jim Varney and lead to a very different type of Ernest movie for the rest of the 1990s.