Six Ernest Movies the World Needs — But Will Never Get
This year is exhausting, emotionally draining, and terrifying. The world’s on fire. We’re in our eighth month of April. The election’s over and the nation is still divided. We need a break. We need an escape. We need to shut our minds down and enjoy something that won’t require us to think. We need Ernest.
Ernest is a lovable idiot. He’s too dumb to be political, and too nice to be at the center of any sinister plot. Ernest feels like childhood. He embodies innocence, naiveté, and the feeling that everything is going to be all right in the end. What we need is a new, 90 minute retreat into the brain numbing world of Jim Varney’s character, Ernest P. Worrell.
Sadly, we’re not going to get it. Jim Varney died of lung cancer twenty years ago, and there isn’t an actor alive who could fill his shoes and reboot the character. Nobody but Varney could bring Ernest to life. When he passed, it brought a close to the ECU — “The Ernest Cinematic Universe” — a canon including nine films that saw Ernest go to camp, save Christmas, get incarcerated, travel to Africa, go to school, get scared-stupid, ride again, slam dunk a basketball, and serve in the U.S. Army. The man accomplished as much as Forrest Gump, all while maintaining steady employment as a janitor.
When Varney met his untimely death, several films were rumored to be in development that would have sent our hero to outer space, onto a pirate ship, enduring a voodoo curse. We’ll never see those movies, and that’s a shame. It’s also a shame that I’ll never realize my lifelong dream of writing an Ernest movie.
I wish this year were different. I wish the world was kind and safe. I wish Varney were still alive, and I was sitting across from him in a Hollywood pitch meeting, giving him my ideas for another Ernest adventure. Since I won’t get to do that, I’ll share my ideas with you. Here are my pitches for six Ernest movies the world deserves but, sadly, will never get:
Ernest Sucks
In this film, Ernest tries online dating, and goes out with a woman who mentions sleeping during the day and staying up all night. She wears black, and gives off a spooky vibe. Ernest is uncomfortable with how forward she is and ends the date early, but not before she gives him a quick kiss — ON THE NECK! Ernest goes through an extreme bout of paranoia when he gets home and soon begins exhibiting vampire-like symptoms. He has a sudden urge to bite Vern. He begins to have an aversion to sunlight. He even eats a rare steak — and LOVES IT! Ernest seeks out the girl who bit him, looking for answers, and finds out she’s not a vampire — she just works a night shift and likes to wear black. He apologizes and we all learn the lesson that you shouldn’t judge people based on how they look.
The Importance of Being Ernest
This movie is NOTHING like Oscar Wilde’s play. In this film, Ernest has his identity stolen. This isn’t your typical identity theft. It’s more than credit card fraud. In a script that borrows heavily from the Nicolas Cage/John Travolta movie Face/Off, a villain surgically switches faces with Ernest on the eve of his wedding. Ernest must convince the bride she has married the wrong guy. In the end, we all learn an important lesson: it’s the person you are on the inside that counts.
Uber Ernest
Finally — an arthouse film for kids! In this flick, Ernest loses his job as a janitor when his workplace replaces him with a Roomba. To make ends-meet, he starts driving an Uber. This film doesn’t have a straight-forward plot. It just follows Ernest around for a night as he drives around a vast array of eclectic characters. In the end, we learn the lesson that we don’t always have to learn a lesson.
Ernest Goes to Costco
You knew a pandemic movie had to be on this list, right? In this film, Ernest and Vern are on lockdown and supplies are getting low. We never see Vern, because he’s stuck in the bathroom, out of toilet paper. Ernest heads to Costco and, wouldn’t you know it, has a hard time. He loses his membership card and has to sneak-in. He sprays himself in the face with hand sanitizer, gets in a fight with an old lady over paper towels, and eats more samples than he should be allowed to by wearing different costumes. Why is Costco still giving out samples during the pandemic? Because it’s an Ernest movie! In the end, he learns we’re all in this together. Oh, and Vern dies. He caught the virus. Rest in peace, Vern.
Ernest Gets High
This is a skydiving movie. Ernest goes high in the sky and jumps out of an airplane. That’s what the title means. It does take place in Colorado, though, so he winds up accidentally eating a laced edible and hiding in a closet for half the movie. Be cool, man. It’s legal.
Ernest: Into the Ernest-Verse
A child befriends his school’s janitor, Ernest. When he goes home, his father is upset to find out his son is friends with a janitor. He thinks janitors are a menace. The next day at school, the kid gets scraped by a radioactive mop, and begins to exhibit janitor-like abilities. He goes home and cleans his whole house! The more he cleans, the more he starts to look like Ernest! The next day at school, he discovers his science teacher has built a super collider. Ernest slips on a freshly-mopped floor and crashes into it. He dies, and the kid takes over his janitor duties, eventually meeting other Ernests from different dimensions — each one of them with janitor-powers. It gets weird. The lesson is that you should treat everyone nice, because you might need their help cleaning up your mess. It’s the most critically-acclaimed Ernest movie ever — some even call it “poignant.”
