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Ernest Saves Christmas
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| Year: |
1988
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Director: |
John R. Cherry III
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| Stars: |
Jim Varney, Douglas Seale, Oliver Clark, Noelle Parker, Gailard Sartain, Billie Byrd, Bill Byrge, Robert Lesser, Key Howard, Jack Swanson, Buddy Douglas, Patty Maloney, Beecher Martin, Barry Brazell, George Kaplan
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| Genre: |
Comedy, Fantasy |
| Rating: |
  5 (from 1 vote) |
| Review: |
Santa Claus (Douglas Seale) has arrived in Florida on December the 23rd to track down his successor, one Joe Carruthers (Oliver Clark), who has recently been sacked from his own show on local television as a children's entertainer. The tradition is that each man to take up the Santa mantle must pass it on to the next, but finding this new candidate might be easier said than done as Santa arrives at the airport and tries to get his bearings. Meanwhile, taxi driver Ernest P. Worrell (Jim Varney) is hightailing it over there with a passenger who claimed to be in a hurry - but maybe not that much of a hurry.
It was inevitable that Varney's Ernest character should appear in his own Christmas movie, and this was it, every bit as inspired as a figure of fun used to hawk umpteen products on the small screen throughout the eighties should have been. With everyone complaining about the commercialisation of the festive season even in 1988, there should have been no surprises that Varney should apply his talents to shilling for Yuletide, making a bit of money for himself and Disney in the process. It was at least better than the slew of Christmas TV movies churned out year after year to keep the schedules filled without so much thought.
It's just that placing the Ernest persona in this setting spoke more to cynicism about the season and the way that many people would watch anything with a Christmas flavour as long as it hammered home a message of goodwill. It's no wonder that horror movies are popular at that time as well, because it was easy to get fed up with the relentless cheer that movies such as Ernest Saves Christmas represented - but what was this? Here they actually had a major dig at those seasonal shockers by having Joe be recruited by his agent to star in a movie called Christmas Slay, where an alien terrorises a bunch of kids on the big day.
They'll have none of that here, and predictably Joe finds he cannot go through with the role, and that's because he has another, more important role to fulfil. Of course, the trouble with movies built around Santa Claus is that quite often they have to conjure up their own mythology about the character, as the legend tends to be pretty much, Santa lives at the North Pole, he delivers the presents to all the children on Christmas Eve, then puts his feet up for the rest of the year (while keeping an eye on would-be evildoers). Not really enough to construct a whole movie around, more a ten minute cartoon.
Which is why cash-in movies from Santa Claus Conquers the Martians to Santa Claus: The Movie to Fred Claus and beyond can falter badly in creating the magic, even if there are those who will see them anyway because, well, it's Christmas and they want to see something Christmassy. Actually, in this case it starts off promising something pleasingly daffy, with Varney's facepulling and funny voices well applied (well, he would have had the hang of it by this stage), but throw in a teenage runaway obviously set up for last minute redemption, and some padding in the form of two warehousemen looking after the reindeer, and you can see how hard it is to pay tribute to the Santa concept with appropriate imagination. But let's not be too harsh, as everyone evidently thought they were imparting wholesome messages, and there are a few laughs, it's just that after a while they dig themselves into a hole of mediocrity. Music by Mark Snow (hey!).
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| Reviewer: |
Graeme Clark
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