Stupid is as Stupid Does

So I just watched Ernest Scared Stupid, and this should tell you a couple of things. One, I must really love to watch bad movies. Two, I clearly lead an exciting life. The movie itself is one out of close to five thousand Ernest movies cranked out by Jim Varney during the 1980s and 1990s. I admit that I enjoyed his commercials for Mellow Yellow back in the day, but when it comes to his movies, lets just say a little Ernest goes a long way. I will preface this review by stating that kids under eight may enjoy this movie, or those who may not be playing with a full deck. As an adult however, the movie is subpar. Its not really bad enough to consistently laugh at, and certainly not good enough to really enjoy. Although where you fall in this range will depend greatly on your tolerance for Varney's rubber faced antics.

Once again we have a troll popping up to menace a small community of morons (see my earlier reviews of Troll and Troll 2). It seems this troll was trapped in the root system of a tree a hundred years ago or so by one of Ernest's ascendants after it tried to eat some kids or some shit like that. Ironically, but not surprisingly, Ernest himself is prophesied to be the one to release the troll. This happens when Ernest helps three kids build a tree house in the very tree the troll is under. They clearly don't notice or care that the tree looks like a giant hand coming out of the ground, or that the entire area is covered with scary movie ankle fog. My Mom always told me that tree houses were gateways to the netherworld, but until I saw this movie I had no reason to believe her. I expect a call from her at any moment with an "I told you so."

So the troll is released, and Ernest finds out from a creepy old woman who lives nearby that it must capture five children by Halloween night in order for it to unleash its army of trolls. This old woman is played by Eartha Kitt, who once upon a time played Catwoman. You'd have to look pretty hard to see how that ever happened, what with her eyebrows looking like a pair of Yosemite Sam's upper lip. Anyway, Ernest is on the case, which means of course that five children are captured and turned into small wooden statues in short order. The troll itself looks like Billy Barty from the Masters of the Universe movie, if he had face herpies and was constantly being tea bagged.

After roughly an hour and ten minutes of screen time, the adult morons in the community finally realize that Ernest has been telling the truth about the troll running amoke in their podunk town. They promptly follow him out to the tree to kill the troll, but wouldn't you know it, they are too late to stop the army of short people wearing badly designed rubber masks. Luckily the kid morons have figured out that the trolls' one weakness is milk. Once again we see lactose intolerance tip the scales in an interspecies war. Soon all but the head troll have been destroyed. He has slipped back under the ground to plead with the demons to make him invincible. Do trolls have a soul to sell? I'll ask my ugly-ass cousin the next time I run into her. Anyway, why the troll didn't do this to begin with is left unexplained, and too much of my brain has already been put to use writing this review to investigate further. So it emerges from the ground, and when he gets squirted with milk (I'll hold off on the porn jokes at this time), we get this wonderful piece of dialog, "I've grown too strong for that. Not even milk can stop me now."

Suddenly, Ernest is reminded of another part of the prophesy that the troll can only be killed with unconditional love. So the climax of the film is Ernest hugging the troll. That's what kills it. A hug. A fucking hug. Could someone explain to me how that is unconditional love, hugging something knowing that by doing it you're going to reduce it to a pile of green glop that looks like hospital food? Anyway, Ernest saves that day, and all the adult morons love on their kid morons, and everyone forgets that it was Ernest who set the damn thing free to begin with. He's like Gilligan, but without the island or a potentially gay, fat man bossing him around. Here's the climax of the movie, if you'd like to save yourself the hour and a half.



Transmission out.