Rotten Tomatoes score: 17%
Let's pause a moment and take stock of the adventures our friend Ernest has had so far: He has channeled the spirit of the immortal Native American warrior, flown Santa's magic sleigh, and become Electro-Man. What will befall our hero next?
This was the last Ernest movie to be released under Disney's Touchstone label. So if this one seems cheaply produced to you, just you wait until we get to the straight-to-VHS entries. This movie is notable for its explanation of Ernest's stupidity, and for introducing a generation of American children to authentic Bulgarian miak. It's also the only Ernest movie where someone says the word "damn."
Long ago, we're told, the wise and noble Phineas Worrell imprisoned the wicked troll Trantor beneath an oak tree in Briarville, Missouri. In retaliation, Trantor cursed the Worrell family line with ever-increasing stupidity.
In modern times, we see that Phineas' descendant Ernest is a "sanitary engineer" who drives a Rube Goldberg garbage truck, which in his mind makes him a "man above the law." The town sheriff orders Ernest to clean up the trash piled up in the yard of local eccentric Frances Hackmore (Eartha Kitt). Meanwhile, some kids are having problems with bullies, and they come to Ernest for help. Ernest responds by putting on a one-man re-enactment of the Botswanan conquest of the Ottoman Empire. Then he helps them build a tree house in the oak tree above Trantor's grave.
Eartha Kitt warns Ernest and the kids about the troll, but to no avail. Trantor emerges and begins absorbing children's souls and turning them into wooden statuettes. If he gets five by Halloween night, something terrible will happen. Eartha Kitt now declares that Ernest, as the descendant of Phineas Worrell, is the "Great Redneck Hope," the only person who can defeat Trantor. He takes to this task in a heroic fashion, running through town like a lunatic and shouting through a megaphone.
Ernest seeks help from local hucksters Tom and Bobby Tulip, who sell him $1000 worth of troll-fighting gear. (I assume Gailard Sartain, who played Bobby's brother Chuck in the last two movies, wasn't available, so he was replaced with a conveniently similar alternate brother.) Ernest sets up a bunch of troll traps and goes on patrol in his garbage truck, while Trantor continues to transmogrify children. When Ernest accidentally traps the mayor's kids instead of the troll, the obligatory Ernest-getting-fired scene occurs.
Ernest encounters Trantor while driving his pickup, so he turns the wheel over to his faithful dog Rimshot while engaging the troll in single combat in the bed of the truck. Let me just say that watching a Jack Russell terrier drive a pickup truck is one of the great moments in cinema. Ernest fails to kill Trantor, but he learns from Eartha Kitt's antique book that the troll is vulnerable to something spelled "MI_K," which Ernest astutely interprets as "miak." You would have thought he couldn't find any this time of year, but he does—unfortunately it has no effect. What's more, Trantor has managed to turn Rimshot to a statue.
The children discover that the troll's weakness is in fact milk. They stock up on it, whilst Trantor uses the souls he's stolen to bring forth a troll army. The entire town does battle with the trolls, but the kids are able to disintegrate them with milk from a Super Soaker. Unfortunately, Trantor has summoned "demons" to make him "invincible," which means not even milk can stop him. Only "the heart of a child" can defeat Trantor in this state, which means Ernest must show him unconditional love. He does so by waltzing with and kissing Trantor, which causes him to explode.
All the children (and Rimshot) are restored to life, and Ernest becomes a legend. Again.
This was the one of only two Ernest movies I didn't see as a kid, so it's hard to evaluate it against the others. I still think Jail and Christmas were better, but this is pretty great. I appreciate the prominent product placement for Purity brand milk, one of the items Ernest used to promote in his advertising days. I'm not sure what to make of the line where Eartha Kitt tells Ernest, "You're the baby; you're the boy." This curious expression would later be used in Slam Dunk Ernest, but Google is no help to me in figuring out what it means.
If you haven't seen the movie, at least listen to the opening credits.
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