Feeling as though it was devoid of any authentic energy, Touchstone/Disney resorted to releasing Ernest Goes to Camp a decade ago, which has induced huge budget cuts and dried up creative ideas. As a result, films were no longer being shown in theaters but rather were shipped straight over to the video store. This was the state of the film industry when I turned 16, the Ernest franchise, with the help of my family, ended up renting out the film, but most of the plot remains a hazy memory of me. Johnny Cherry had decided to work on a solo project, resulting in south Africa and Canada taking over where the final two movies were shot, while film production of Tennessee continued.
Jim Varney is cast as a mechanic Ernest who on account of his clumsiness demolishes a car and subsequently loses his job. He then seems to lose all hope until he pays a visit to a nearby diner and asks his crush, Renee played by Linda Kash, out on a date. However, she rejects him for saying she wants someone more adventurous than him. He decides to buy her some jewels from a flea market hoping that it might impress her. Unknown to him, these artifacts were stolen from an obscure tribe in Central Africa. To his surprise, Ernest finds himself in the adventure that he so desperately wanted as a group of factions chasing after these artifacts carry him, much to his shock. For the first half of the picture, the adventurist side of the picture is cut out as Ernest struggles to overcome his obsession with Renee.
By this point, it is a fact that Jim Varney is aging; he was at the time 46. He had been portraying Ernest for 17 years and physical comedy routines were no longer as easy for him as they used to be during his younger years. He was slowly succumbing to the same disease that killed him 3 years later. Now, he appears to be more delicate and because of this, we don’t find the slapstick moments funny but are slightly concerned for a middle aged man who back then should not be exerting himself more than what is required of him.’ To that end, I don’t believe I need to explain why that isn’t the best state of mind to be in for an Ernest movie.
There seems to be an inclination to dismiss Varney and his Ernest character as just “low cinema.” I can draw parallels of Ernest’s character with the silent movie clowns and their successors. What Varney is doing belongs to the heritage of cinema comedy, therefore I don’t perceive those ancient films as being mere garbage. They are not great works of art but nevertheless good family/kids films. This particular period of history for the cinema series is pure rubbish, having plot lines that are sure to put children to sleep and an utter absence of speed. Laughs erupt like fireworks and then linger without any sort of fulfillment, and there are considerable parts of the film where Ernest is absent. The remaining characters are considerably more boring than we wished them to be.
For the entirety of the Touchstone era, Disney would simply not allow for Ernest to be seen as a flamboyant character. This resulted in him not having any romantic preferences at all. Out of the four movies that were created under the Touchstone label, only Earnest Goes to Jail revolved around him courting a female character. Even if that was the case it was never a success and the rest of the attempts also ended up failing. A strong case can be made for Ernest Goes to Africa being the worst of the bunch. Far too many sequences in the movie had only Renee as the sole individual on screen. While Linda Kash has proven that she is an impeccable comedienne, the source material is not doing a good job at showcasing her talents in these films.
Ernest Goes To Africa sounds like a plot that would be fun to watch if not for the fact that it isn’t intended to be a family film. There are so many ordnance and knife carrying criminals who don’t even get to be cartoons in this movie. Cherry seems to have made it very clear that he wanted to throw Ernest into real-life dangerous situations, so he’s fighting genuine murderers. This also gives a little more room into racism theories regarding Africa being a ‘savage’ and ‘lawless people’. Of course, like no other continent, there are places where criminals can freely exist relatively speaking. Ernest Goes To Africa won’t educate you on this as the movie shows Africa to be filled with dark people who are killers. One of the other characters, Bazoo, hinted that he wanted to rape Renee which is lascivious to say the least and never expected that to happen in Ernest film.
Renee witnesses the kidnapping of Kazim’s harem while Ernest manages to slop on the tribute band with his makeup. Emulating a stereotypical Indian accent, he goes all in with a towel wrapped around his head like a turban all the while slathering on extra tan for effect. Growing up in the Deep South, Varney could effortlessly pull of the southern accent but when it came to any other non American accent, he had a tendency to go for a caricature, purposefully. Australian accents only go so far as an English accent because let’s be honest those stereotypes have far too many issues. A brownface adding to the already displaced and whitewashed plot is not ideal.
Ernest crosses the path of the group possessing the jewels and instead of chilling out for once, let’s continue to pretend like we are in the 70s and 90s, and pulls out a jive accent at them. However, as Varney did, I do call them homies as well, they made an absolute fool out of themselves. As far as I remember, this was approximately 1997, and racist twists including South Africa and America as the location did exist, so claiming innocence was far from an option. All in all the movie is nothing more and nothing less than a lifeless frozen popsicle with embarrassment in front of a fan.
It was pretty clear the Ernest franchise wouldn’t be around for very much longer. There was one more movie after Varney’s cancer would come to spread all over him. This would be filmed back to back with the other one. Along with this, I believe there was some sugar daddy money that dragged the filming to South Africa. There’s definitely some hilarious moments that come up in the previous films and even though they’re never perfect, it’s still hard to see Ernest Saves Christmas or Ernest Scared Stupid and then this. Even the most dedicated Ernest fans would be disappointed by this mess as the story and overall filming production quality is lackluster, and not up to standards of a movie. It seemed Ernest’s legacy would end in the worst possible way.
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