Ernest Goes to Camp (1987)

Jim Varney – who had been on Fernwood 2 Night and other TV shows since 1976 – created a rubber-faced numbskull character called Ernest P Worrell, who was used in TV commercials to sell dozens of different products.

That, perhaps, is the character’s metier. Certainly, feature films are not. While a floppy baseball cap, an ear-to-ear smile and a pratfall may be enough for a 30-second TV spot, they don’t begin to energise a 90-minute movie.

Here, Ernest – a klutz who can do nothing right – is desperate to be a camp counsellor, so he takes a job as an (inept and accident-prone) handyman at Kamp Kikakee, a summer camp where middle-class kids go to learn Indian lore and stay out of their parents’ hair for a month or so.

This year, however, the camp is persuaded to take in six juvenile delinquents, wards of a nearby state institution who are participating in something called “Second Chance” to straighten themselves out.

The camp director doesn’t know what to do with these kids, so he promotes Ernest from handyman to counsellor and brushes the kids off on him.

Naturally, they don’t like the stupid Worrell and delight in taking advantage of his trusting nature.  Ernest remains blissfully unaware, but their treatment does not go unnoticed by the camp nurse, Miss St. Cloud (Victoria Racimo), an Indian woman whose grandfather – an old Indian Chief (Iron Eyes Cody) – owns the sacred ancestral land on which Kamp Kikakee is situated.

Another plotline follows Sherman Krader (John Vernon), the nasty owner of a shady strip mining company who wants the camp land. But the Chief doesn’t want to sell.

The two plots bang into each other when Krader dupes Ernest and the old Chief into signing a piece of paper and releasing the land. But here come the kids to help out and learn that being selfish is not nice.

None of this is funny because the director and co-writer, former advertising executive John Cherry, tries so hard to make it so. Trying and doing are not the same thing.

Nearly all of the gags involve physical harm coming to Ernest in some way. In 90 minutes he takes more falls than Hulk Hogan and is subjected to everything from being set on fire in a lawn chair to being slammed around by former footballer Lyle Alzado, who has a small part as Krader’s main henchman, Bronk.

It’s a moronic, obnoxious and irritating effort that must have been geared to preschoolers.

Ernest P Worrell
Jim Varney
Nurse St. Cloud
Victoria Racimo
Sherman Krader
John Vernon
Old Indian Chief
Iron Eyes Cody
Bronk Stinson
Lyle Alzado
Jake
Gailard Sartain
Eddie
Daniel Butler
Bobby Wayne
Patrick Day
Crutchfield
Scott Menville
Bubba Vargas
Jacob Vargas
Danny
Danny Capri
Moustafa Hakeem Jones
Hakeem Abdul-Samad
Chip Ozgood
Todd Loyd
Pennington
Andrew Woodworth
Brooks
Richard Speight Jr.
Attorney Elliott Blatz
Buck Ford
Mr Tipton
Larry Black
Counsellor Stennis
Eddy Schumacher
Counsellor Sparks
Hugh Sinclair
Counsellor Puckett
Johnson West
State Supervisor
Jean Wilson
Young Indian Brave
Paulo Deleon
Brave’s Father
Harvey Godwin Jr.
Medicine Man
Jeff Standing Bear
Mr Stewart
Ivan Green
Molly Stewart
Christian Haas
Mrs Stewart
Brenda Haynes

Director
John Cherry