ilovemovies2016 Best Ernest movie of the series but have more to watch yet. mediocre comedy but still the best yet i have seen short and sweet review

goldfussmikey I have to be in a special mood to watch this, but it's one of those movies that I watch with my dad, and we end up holding our sides from laughter.'Ernest goes to jail' is the only one of the Ernests that I can watch on a tolerating level. Although the more I've watched it with my dad, the more I've come to enjoy it. The movie is filled with quotable lines and memorable moments that just get funnier by the moment. Hats of to Jim Varney. Even though this movie really doesn't take itself seriously, he puts on an incredible performance playing two difficult roles on opposite extremes. He nails both roles to perfection. Maybe it's the family tradition that has made me warm up to this movie. Maybe it's the over-the-top drama or the quotable lines, but one thing is certain, it's never fails to make me laugh.

reddragonhero17 No matter what the situation, Ernest always brings the laughs and this one is no exception. John Cherry keeps the laughs flowing nonstop from scene to scene. I even like his Rube Goldberg-like contraptions at his house since I'm a fan of this stuff. If I were to single out the funniest scene it would have to be the one where he's the old lady. Hilarious! RIP Ernest P Worrell

SweeptheLegJohnny2 Though long believed to be Jim Varney's creation, the character Ernest is steeped in literary lore. This stock character was created by the expatriates in Paris during the early twenties. Several scholars have attributed it to Gertrude Stein herself, citing evidence that "Earnst" -- the name taken from Dadist Max Ernst -- was her nickname for specific ubiquitous prostitutes she more frequently solicited. This is debatable, though, since there are three specific short stories by expatriate writers using the stock Earnst character: Fitzgerald's "Earnst Isn't Rich," Joyce's "Day in the Life of the Janitor," and Hemingway's "Dead Whore on a Mountain." All of these stories, and an accumulated history on this character that was passed by some of the great writers of the twentieth century, can be found in the forthcoming "The Importance of Being Earnst," edited by Joyce Carol Oates.It was this literary tradition that led director, former ad executive, and "co-creator" John Cherry to take the dare and approach one of the days finest writers, Philip Roth, to tackle a tale of Ernest. Roth was apparently a fan of the early stories, and he took the opportunity to graft Ernest into a tale he was already writing as an expose on prisons -- a muckraking masterpiece he was concocting in the tradition of Upton Sinclair. But when Roth turned in his first draft, Cherry was surprised to find an all-prose script that involved Ernest being trapped in an Israeli prison with an sadomasochistic literary fan and Roth himself. Cherry rejected the script, citing a lack of "Knowhatimean's," though Roth would later tell confidants that Cherry was simply anti-Semitic.Cherry then gave the script to his pet arragutang to re-write. The simean grafted the script onto the other Ernest movies, including a several references to the ever-present anti-holiday-consumerism themes of "Ernest Saves Christmas." Unfortunately the arragutang, Benny, died before he could finish, and his trainer Charlie Cohen ending up getting final credit.But the tale doesn't end there. Roth and Cherry later reconciled, and this led to Roth contributing to the unfinished "Ernest the Pirate"; supposedly these scenes involve the rescue of a nubile great-granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor who was attending Columbia University before being trapped on the high seas. He also worked in thinly veiled criticisms of the Ernest movies in between "Goes to Jail" and "Pirate," including a line that went, "I've been scared stupid, I've rode again, I've slam dunked, I've even been in the army, but I've never been a pirate before. Now, suck my **** while I read Dosteyeksky."