Day 1. Ernest Saves Christmas

Ernest P. Worrell was a live-action comedic character who came out of the 1980s, like Ed Grimley or Pee-Wee Herman. Ernest was portrayed by actor Jim Varney (Toy Story), and appeared in a series of children's comedy films after the character was introduced in TV commercials. The whole thing with Ernest is that he's a well-meaning fool with an inflated sense of his own abilities, who keeps breaking the fourth-wall by narrating his thoughts to his unseen friend Vern. As lowbrow as the Ernest movies are, they're also Godardian.

I first saw the second theatrical Ernest P. Worrell film, Ernest Saves Christmas, at home on videocassette. Prior to this revisiting, my memories of it were vague, except that I found it to be strangely dull following the hijinks of Ernest Goes to Camp. It became the second and (so far) last Ernest film I saw. Now that I'm older, and put in effort to uncover the secrets of Christmas, the universe, and the human genome through Ernest films, I thought I'd approach this one anew.

Part of my hesitation was that Ernest fans always struck me as a certain type of filmgoer who ventured into nothing but Ernest movies--like those people who go see operas when they're projected in cinemas or like fans of the Underworld movies. It's with some delight to discover that Ernest P. Worrell has a tendency to be funnier than I remembered him being, and director John R. Cherry (who directs everything with Ernest and nothing else) has some physical comedy chops. 

In this film, Ernest is a cab driver who tells an uptight passenger how Christmas is his favourite time of year. His glove compartment even has a sticker on it that says "Keep 'Christ' is Christmas," which seems a little heavy-handed. The rest of the movie is more commercially about the spiritual belief in Santa Claus. 

Ernest picks up a passenger claiming to be St. Nick (Douglas Seale) who is seeking a suitable replacement to deliver presents to the children of the world, and also befriends a young runaway named Harmony (Noelle Parker). To help his new companions and save Christmas, Ernest has to get in a series of misadventures and wear a variety of disguises, like he's just another white man trying to take credit for Madea. 

When Varney drinks from a bowl of punch, he looks into the camera and reviews the beverage, "Superb!" Then a Christmas tree falls on him. That isn't funny as a joke, but it's funny in practice in this movie. Varney is smug in his critical appraisal of the punch, as though he's making fun of people like me, and director Cherry frames the tree landing on his back as an unforeseen element. It's as random and stupid a comic gag as if he threw a cat in Ernest's face. Likewise, Ernest singing through the melody of "O Christmas Tree" while knowing no lyrics except for the title is lazy comedy, but works through Varney's and Cherry's commitment to go all the way with something stupid. Unquestioned confidence in one's own stupidity can be funny. 

If Ernest Saves Christmas isn't exactly inspired in its humour, it stumbles even more obviously as a holiday morality tale. It just doesn't have a good story to tell. Santa's trek to find someone to take his place means the movie is driven by a stilted business affair. Harmony's isolation from her parents is a nice element, but her emotional reckoning isn't felt, like Macaulay Culkin's Kevin in Home Alone. Varney proved he could actually make Ernest heartfelt, with the "Gee, I'm Glad It's Raining" musical number in Ernest Goes to Camp. Nothing has that impact here, when it desperately needs it.

Furthermore, the entire final third of the film, as Ernest assumes the role of Santa Claus, could only achieve gravitas were he previously established as a non-believer. The belief in Santa Claus is a recurrent element in Christmas narratives. It seems like a trivial thing to believe in, but relates on a larger scale to how characters find openness to the world and the people around them. In that sense, Ernest Saves

Christmas is well meaning, just not particularly well thought out. 

Personal History

As a kid I was smitten with actress Noelle Parker in her performance as juvenile delinquent Harmony. Like many innocent nine-year olds, I had a thing for teenage girls who committed crimes within the safe confines of PG-rated films. 

Christmas History 

The film's opening credits play over a series of old illustrations of Santa Claus by artist Haddon Sundblom. In many of these, he's holding a bottle of Coca-Cola. It's an urban myth that Santa's appearances in Coke ads are the origin of his present Western jolly corporate red-and-white image. The image of Santa Claus evolved over the ages, a product of Darwinism, not Creationism. Ernest P. Worrell, however, did get his start shilling for Coca-Cola (and many other products) on television. If you paid attention to Christmastime, you'd already know that.

The Meaning of Christmas

Ernest Saves Christmas is set in Orlando, where there's rarely snow, so it doesn't really have the atmospheric vibe of a Christmas movie. Then at the end, it snows. Everybody looks at the sky and finally understands the true meaning of Christmas. I think an Alf episode ended this way, too. 

Tomorrow: Christmas Evil