Ernest à l'armée

As usual, Ernest's movies don't ever come close to winning an Oscar, but it's just sweet and innocent comedy. Your children should really love this movie...and all the rest of his movies.

With only the vaguest semblance of a reason, Ernest is now in the Army, free to muck about in the sands of some weirdly ethnic Araby, a grotesque parody of the Persian Gulf and Somalia. He'll try to befriend an orphan lad, try to get the girl and basically hold together an uneasy mix of atrocious and overwrought acting, poorly-thought-out overlong comedy bits and a bizarre combination of stereotypes and weird, early-90's media. There's something just not right about the whole venture, but in defiance of the will of God - our just and terrible God - you'll pull through and watch the film to its inevitable conclusion. Because it's Ernest and you like Ernest.

After watching Ernest Goes to Africa, I never felt another Ernest movie would come out. What a visceral surprise to see this movie on the video shelves. Moronic and only occasionally funny, I was surprised they didn't do an Ernest in Space or something like that. Jim Varney should have stepped in and said something before this movie was made. I mean, if he was that hard up for money, why couldn't he ask the loyal Ernest fans of the world to help him. A sad pitiful chapter in the life of Ernest P. Worrel.

"Ernest in the Army" should have been hilarious, but sadly, it doesn't feel like a movie about him, just an army movie that happens to have Ernest in it. It's okay, not a major letdown, but you'd think a comedy about a bumbling idiot in the Army, especially when it's Ernest P. Worrell, would be a laugh riot. That is not the case. Sure, it has some predictably funny moments, but they are few and far between. Even the army itself (as depicted in this film) just feels very ordinary. The dramatic subplot involving the black street kid is unnecessary and feels tacked-on.

** out of ****

This is the last of the many Ernest movies and I'm surprised that the only one I saw before was "Ernest Saves Christmas". It's kind of a shame as that was probably the best in the whole series. The Ernest P. Warrell character started out doing commercials and they made a lot movie series out of him. As you might have guessed, it's really hard to stretch a character that was funny in a few commercials into an entire length of movies. Even sketch comedy doesn't work as badly as that. It's mostly just nothing but childish jokes.

It was actually weird to see a 1998 movie about fighting in the Middle East. It actually makes me weirdly nostalgic for that time period pre 911 when there wasn't really a major threat like communism or terrorism. I guess there was still warfare and there always will be. The kid and woman character in the film honestly don't do that bad of a job. Ernest would have been funny as like a side character but to make entire movies focused on him is annoying. At least we got that great Santa. *1/2