Ernest Rides Again

John Cherry, 1993
Rotten Tomatoes score: 14%

It was difficult to find a poster for this movie. Most of the images I found were too small to be usable, so I resorted to this strange confetti-themed option. This seems to have been the theatrical poster, and it mentions the short subject "Mr. Bill Goes to Washington," which was screened together with Ernest Rides Again and also appeared on the VHS.

The other images were all DVD covers, and most of them included a blurb from the Boston Globe declaring this "The best of the series." Now, I don't think I'm out of line if I consider myself an authority on Ernest, and I can't imagine anyone thinking this was the best Ernest movie. This was the first one produced without the backing of Disney, and it certainly shows. Even the poster is half-assed—just look at the stock close-up of Ernest they used. He never even wears that white thermal Henley shirt in the movie (or in any other movie, for that matter). And I don't recall any confetti being involved in the plot.

Speaking of the plot, we now find Ernest working as custodian at a Virginia college, where he amuses himself by pretending to be Indiana Jones and palling around with a history professor named Dr. Melon. Melon likes Ernest, but he is put off by Ernest's monumental childishness. Melon's colleagues think the good doctor is a crank, obsessed with a half-baked theory that the real Crown Jewels of England are hidden in a Revolutionary War cannon called Goliath.

Now get ready for this, because this is going to stun you: The theory is true, and the cannon is located near the college. And they find it. The rest of the movie is largely taken up by a series of chase sequences, as Ernest and Dr. Melon try to protect the cannon and the jewels from a sinister looter named Glencliff. This mostly involves the cannon rolling down the highway at high speed, but somehow making all the turns and staying safely on the road. Unbeknownst to our heroes, MI-6 has also taken an interest, and some secret agents join the chase.

Dr. Melon has surmised based on various historical sources that the Crown Jewels are in the barrel of the cannon, but Ernest eventually discovers them in a powder barrel beside the cannon. He places the crown on his head, whereupon Glencliff captures him. The crown is stuck so tightly to Ernest's head that Glencliff tries to remove it with a cranial saw; unfortunately, the saw fails to make a scratch on Ernest's skull. ("Good thing it hit the hard end," Ernest explains.)

The secret agents close in and save Ernest, but since the crown cannot be removed from his head, they declare that he must now serve as King of England. Ernest doesn't care for the idea ("I'd have to learn the language!"), and luckily the crown slips off during a "what's that on your shirt" prank.

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As I indicated above, this is far from the best in the series. In fact, it was the last to be released theatrically; beginning with Ernest Goes to School, the rest would be released direct to VHS, which, frankly, was for the best. I remember renting these things from Blockbuster on weekends in elementary school and watching them repeatedly. Clearly, that's what they were made for, and there was no sense releasing them to an unappreciative public full of fuddy-duddy adults.

This was also Linda Kasch's first of three appearances in an Ernest movie, this time as Dr. Melon's overbearing wife Nan. She is accompanied in most of her scenes by two ineffectual door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesmen who have the irritating habit of finishing each other's sentences. These roles cry out to be played by Gailard Sartain and Bill Byrge from the Disney installments, but alas, that comedy duo would never return.

But there's one other thing this movie has, and that's the best song in the world, the Ballad of Ernest P. Worrell: listen for yourself.