Ernest Saves Christmas (1988) Review: The Christmas Classic Nobody Talks About

The Slept-On Cinema Case

Stan calls it one of his all-time favorite Christmas movies and can't understand why nobody mentions it. Grobe's theory of the scores is the same as with Seagal or Van Damme: it's a genre unto itself, and "if you're not an Ernest person, you just don't watch it." Both hosts grew up watching Ernest movies only when their mothers weren't home, and both discovered their wives are not Ernest people. It is, Stan says, "a litmus test."

The origin story is the hosts' favorite part. Jim Varney and a Nashville ad agency created Ernest in 1980 as a single character who sold everything (pancake mix, soda, cars, Coke, Chex, Taco John's), always talking to the camera as his unseen neighbor Vern. The ads went national, became a Saturday morning show that won a Daytime Emmy, and turned into four Disney features. As Grobe puts it, "you didn't even know what he was selling when he came on screen, but you knew who Ernest was." The bits from those commercials, the pancakes included, make it into the film.

The first pick

Stan takes Jim Varney and the Ernest character first overall, arguing you can see the seeds of 1990s Jim Carrey and Eddie Murphy in the faces, the costumes, and the physical comedy. Grobe adds that Varney had classical training and slips Shakespeare-grade soliloquies into a kids' movie every twelve minutes. Grobe's first pick is the movie's ability to put you in the Christmas spirit on contact.

Also drafted: Douglas Seale as Santa (a WWII veteran who took thirty years off acting and later voiced the Sultan in Aladdin), the score by the composer who went on to The X-Files, the trip to Vern's house where the audience becomes Vern, the movie poster, the stubborn "helper elms" bit, and the universal cleaning technique of hiding things instead of putting them away.

BOLOs

• Coca-Cola Santa, an actress named Noelle in a Christmas movie, and 80s businessman talk.
• Sweating in a Christmas movie, a shoe hat, snow globes, and the number 69 in a kids' film.
• An ad for Bic pens, backing up on a highway, 3D glasses, and so much butter.
• Eastern Airlines, the magical sound effect, two kinds of snakes, and My Pet Monster.

Worth watching?

Yes. If it's your first time, congratulations, you have a new annual movie. Superlative, favorite outfit: Stan takes the shoe hat ("I made everyone in my house come and look"); Grobe takes Ernest as the neck-brace mom. Bumper sticker, unanimous: "Know what I mean?" Runners-up: "I'm him," which the hosts believe this movie invented years before basketball did. Drink to pair: mulled wine simmered low so the whole house smells like Christmas, or a Sam Adams Old Fezziwig if you can still find one in the back of the fridge.

Production observation

Released November 11, 1988, opening second to Child's Play; $28.2 million domestic on a $6.5 million budget. One of the first films shot primarily in Orlando, partly on the still-under-construction Disney-MGM Studios lot. The hosts' one change: reveal earlier that Santa's magic is fading, and give the Joe Carruthers role to a name actor. Spin-off pitches: actually make Christmas Slay, the film-within-the-film, and Ernest vs. Chucky, settling the 1988 box office once and for all.

Keep the movie night going

• Silent Night, Deadly Night and Black Christmas for the show's other holiday episodes.
• Spy Hard for another comedy critics refused to laugh at.
• Movies Critics Got Wrong for more underdog picks.
• The Qualification List for every movie the show has defended.