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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.

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

While the hit Netflix series Stranger Things was inspired by classic games of Dungeons & Dragons, it seems like a no-brainer that someone would develop a tabletop RPG system to make playing the show possible. That’s the basic premise of Kids on Bikes, a game where players are the inhabitants of a small town where mystery and horror are bubbling to the service. Despite the title, PCs can be kids, teens, or adults and use pre-made archetypes to quickly take on a role you would expect to find in such a story. A unique powered character is shared narratively between all the players, a la Eleven or E.T.

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.

Movie Review – Ernest Goes to Camp

Ernest Goes to Camp (1987)
Written by John R. Cherry III and Coke Sams
Directed by John R. Cherry III

While his first film appearance was a cameo in our previously reviewed film, Ernest made his starring debut in this film. The story goes that in the mid-1980s, Disney took part in a parade held for the Indy 500 in Indianapolis. Studio executives Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg attended and noted that this Ernest person received louder applause than Mickey Mouse. The audience started yelling, “Hey Vern,” while the Disney dudes had no idea what that was about. They contacted John Cherry and Jim Varney and decided they would finance an Ernest feature film. It wasn’t precisely what Cherry had wanted as Disney nixed certain elements, mainly Ernest speaking directly to the camera when he talks to Vern.

Movie Review – Dr. Otto and the Riddle of the Gloom Beam

Dr. Otto and the Riddle of the Gloom Beam (1985)
Written by John Cherry and Coke Sams
Directed by John Cherry

Jim Varney had made a solid go of it in Los Angeles. He’d been a regular & recurring cast member on multiple nationally broadcast shows by the end of the 1970s. A cast member of Johnny Cash & Friends, a recurring role as a sleazy used car salesman on Norman Lear’s Fernwood2Nite, and even in the cast of the notorious Pink Lady and Jeff. He was married to Jacqui, his first wife, and was helping to raise her two sons. But things weren’t going well in L.A., so Varney returned to his hometown of Lexington, Kentucky. His big dream was to star on Broadway, which was a challenging goal.

Movie Review – Vampire’s Kiss

Vampire’s Kiss (1989)
Written by Joseph Minion
Directed by Robert Bierman

The trailer for Robert Eggers’s Nosferatu was released online a few days ago and it looks to be quite the descent into classic Gothic horror. Vampires have been a part of cinema for over a century and have appeared in all forms. The recent Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person purports to take a modern satirical look at the monster, while another recent release, Abigail, places the vampire in an action-comedy horror scenario. I don’t think any of these takes on the vampire could ever match the frenzy and unhinged energy Nicolas Cage brings to the monster in Vampire’s Kiss. I was shocked in a way no film has made me in a long time watching the actor’s choices.

Movie Review – Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!

Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (1989)
Written by Pedro Almodóvar and Yuyi Beringola
Directed by Pedro Almodóvar

As he does in almost all his work, Pedro Almodovar delivered yet another provocative, gorgeous story centered on a woman and complications in her life. It would be easy to denounce this movie as “problematic” if you view art as a surface-level thing without facets and complexity. Almodovar is an exceptionally talented artist who knows this is a film about a profoundly gross relationship. The audience feeling unease throughout is intentional, and the ending is such a perfect note to go out on. The face of our lead shows a sudden realization through the haze of the intense bubble she’s been trapped inside. This is wrong, this is something very dark & twisted she’s trapped within.

Movie Review – Mystery Train

Mystery Train (1989)
Written and directed by Jim Jarmusch

Like Soderbergh, van Sant, and Linklater, Jim Jarmusch is a director who rose to prominence during this period, and I’m not sure how I feel about him. There are Jarmusch films I love (Paterson, Broken Flowers, Ghost Dog), while others I’m a bit more confounded by. I still need to watch his first two films as I hear tremendous things. Like several of his other pictures, Mystery Train is actually a series of short films with wraparound scenes that connect them. It seems to be a structure he’s very comfortable working in, using vignettes about different characters in the same place or moments from the same character’s life. His movies have such a relaxed feeling about them, a mishmash of Laurel & Hardy and David Lynch at times, and are old-fashioned but feel incredibly fresh.