Ernest Saves Christmas (1988)

Directed by John Cherry. Starring Jim Varney, Douglas Seale, Noelle Parker, Oliver Clark, Gailard Sartain, Bill Byrge, Billie Bird, Patty Maloney, Buddy Douglas. [PG]

Ernest P. Worrell comes close to ceding the spotlight to a co-star in this juvenile Christmas movie (he’s certainly secondary to the action). Story shows how Santa Claus (Seale) travels from the North Pole to Orlando to inform a local TV personality (Clark) he’s been chosen to be the new Santa, but when Santa is locked up because no one will believe who he really is, cab driver Ernest steps up to save the (holi)day. Aimed at kids, so maybe they won’t find it incredibly tiresome, but I did—Jim Varney was more “talented” than “funny”, and I didn’t laugh once. Whenever a bratty teenage runaway (Parker) inserts herself into the action, I was reminded how much better this kind of thing was done in the first Santa Clause, even Santa Claus: The Movie—neither were all that good, by any means, but at least some things worked. Cutaways from the main action to a pair of dim-witted dock workers played by Sartain and Byrge can be excruciating. Seale previously played Kris Kringle in an episode of “Amazing Stories”. Second in the feature film Ernest series; next, he’d go to jail.

27/100