Ernest saves christmas movie#
Ernest saves christmas series#

Yes, he disguised himself as different people, and he did an adequate job as these different characters, but I wouldn't say that he made me laugh.

Varney did a decent job at portraying the character, but I wouldn't say that he was the most gifted comedic actor on earth.

It's not that Ernest himself is a terrible character, there's a certain innocence about him that could've been endearing, but there's parts where the guy is just insufferable. Here's the thing about Jim Varney, when he ventured outside the Ernest character and actually did some more serious stuff, the guy wasn't bad at all. This movie, eh, didn't really do much for me in terms of performance or comedy. The one difference being that, to me, every Pink Panther film I saw was really enjoyable. There's a familiarity from one Ernest film to the next, much like in the Pink Panther. Maybe the locations and some of the story elements, but it all boiled down to Ernest being a child-like fool getting into increasingly absurd hi-jinks. I'm not trying to suggest that Jim Varney and Peter Sellers are even in the same stratosphere as far as comedic performances went, Peter blew Jim out of the water on almost every level, but it's similar in that Jim Varney, essentially, played the same character for decades and nothing, if anything, rarely changed about any of the films. This, to me, reminds me of a low-brow version of the Pink Panther films from the 60s and 70s with Peter Sellers, I don't count Trail of the Pink Panther, released in 82, because Peter Sellers' scenes were comprised of deleted scenes from other films in the franchise. It wasn't as much a formative part of my childhood as, say, the Naked Gun trilogy was, but it's not like I'm completely unfamiliar with this franchise. It’s entirely possible that he will do so again.I remember watching most, if not all, of the Ernest films as a child. Then again, Ernest has surprised me before. I have now watched three Ernest movies for this column and while I would definitely be up for watching and writing about more, something tells me we’ve already covered the cream of the crop, and everything after this point is bound to be a disappointment. It made me miss Varney anew, as he had so much left to give when he died at 50 in 2000 from Lung Cancer. I was legitimately shocked at how much I enjoyed Ernest Saves Christmas. He’s not just skinny, he’s slight and while he cares about children and the true meaning of Christmas and whatnot he’s more concerned with finding a qualified successor so that he can retire in peace and finally start playing the field a little. For starters, he is shockingly svelte for jolly old Saint Nick, skinny even. Santa figures prominently in Ernest Saves Christmas but he’s a far cry from Coca-Cola or Norman Rockwell’s Santa Claus. You know that unofficial list of things that have to be in every Christmas movie? Ernest Saves Christmas doesn’t care about any of that shit.

Ernest saves christmas movie#

What I dug about it is that it is an utterly off-brand Christmas movie, one that brazenly eschews pretty much cliche and convention of the Christmas movie with the exception of some of the ones involving a dude in a red costume flying around the world dispensing gifts. I decided to watch Ernest Saves Christmas because, as its title helpfully conveys, it is a Christmas movie starring Jim Varney as lovable goofball Ernest P. Oh, and I’m delving deep into the filmographies of Oliver Stone and Virginia Madsen for you beautiful people as well. I’m deep into a project on the films of the late, great, fervently mourned David Bowie and I have now watched and written about every movie Sam Peckinpah made over the course of his tumultuous, wildly melodramatic psychodrama of a life and career. That’s also true of the motion pictures and television projects of the late Tawny Kitaen.Ī generous patron is now paying me to watch and write about the cult animated show Batman Beyond and I just finished a look at the complete filmography of troubled former Noxzema pitch-woman Rebecca Gayheart.

Ernest saves christmas series#

Or you can be like four kind patrons and use this column to commission a series of pieces about a filmmaker, actor or television show. The price goes down to seventy-five dollars for all subsequent choices. It’s the career and site-sustaining column that gives YOU, the kindly, Christ-like, unbelievably sexy Nathan Rabin’s Happy Place patron, an opportunity to choose a movie that I must watch, and then write about, in exchange for a one-time, one hundred dollar pledge to the site’s Patreon account. Welcome, friends, to the latest entry in Control Nathan Rabin 4.0.