Ernest Goes to Jail [VHS]

Jim Varney in one of his best misadventures! The story-line is absolutely hysterical...Jim Carrey and the young Jerry Lewis couldn't have done it better!

Critics take note..there is no such thing as "low-brow" comedy..educated people call it slapstick, and not everyone can do it well. Jim Varney had a "gift", and he knew how to use it...combining this original story with his personality and antics resulted in a gut busting FUNNY film.

I have seen countless great comedies that run the gamut,from The Stooges to Woody Allen. "Ernest Goes To Jail" is right up there with the best comdeies you could own! Too bad it's not on DVD.

Even Walt Disney would have approved!

I really wanted to give this movie the five stars it so rightly deserves, but I can't. The DVD is just very, VERY poor. I will get to that later.

I always loved the Ernest movies when I was a kid, and even today at age 20, I still find them as funny and humerous as I did when I was little, if not more. "Ernest Goes to Jail" is by far my favorite Ernest movie.

Ernest always seems to get in trouble, and this movie is no exception. Ernest P. Worrell works as a janitor at a bank; or at least TRYING to work. Things go horribly wrong when Ernest is framed by a ruthless convict who looks EXACTLY like him, and is sent to the big house. While the evil look-alike is living his life, Ernest has to make it out of jail alive in hopes of proving his innocence. But of course, as always, nothing ever comes easy for Ernest. And the results are hillarious.

Jim Varney is as hillarious as ever in this out-of-control comedy. Forget Jim Carrey, THIS guy was the king of physical comedy. He also takes the challeng of playing TWO roles; playing Ernest, and the evil convict, Nash. And as goofy as this movie is, it actually has a creative story and plot.

The DVD, on the other hand, is not so great. Be warned: it is FULLSCREEN. I don't care if this is a comedy, it should be widescreen. Now, I wouldn't had mind if this movie had not been shot in widescreen, but from what I can remember, this one WAS in theatres, so it HAD to have been shot in widescreen format. But, I guess I can let that slide, since I have never seen the movie in widescreen, and being used to seeing it in fullscreen. The picture quality is so-so; not bad, but not great. Might as well have watched it on VHS. However, the sound quality is really good.

Special features? There aren't any. So don't go searching for them, because they aren't there. Nothing. I would've been satisfied with at least one theatrical trailer.

All in all, "Ernest Goes to Jail" is an awesome movie; despite how poor the DVD is. It's still funny, even today. I almost gave the DVD 3stars, but the movie is so good, I didn't want to give it too much of a low rating. So, I'll settle for 4 stars. Just keep in mind if the DVD wasn't so poor, I would've had no problem giving it 5 stars. It's a 5 star movie on a 2 star DVD. Maybe you should just get the VHS instead, since there isn't much of a difference between the two.

I loved how silly the whole movie was, and loved the way the picture quality was and sound quality, too. Even though they probably could have been a little bit more cleaner, like where the picture quality could have been a little more sparkling clean and new looking. But, I like it enough that I'd give it a 4 star rating, but I have this a 3 star rating only for the sake of that the only things I hate about how they put it on DVD. When putting it on DVD, they could have done a better job with how they did. Like, they could have tried to find as many extra stuff about it as they could, and put it all on this DVD; and they could have seperated the whole movie into more scenes in the Scene Selection than they did. They only made the movie into 10 scenes in the Scene Selection, like the other Ernest movies, which actually ticks me off, because then favorite spots on the movie are not as easy to find, like it makes it harder to search for only certain scenes, and you have to fast-forward or rewind a scene after you get to the beginning of a scene, as if your favorite spot doesn't just so happen to be at the beginning of it; which is very inconvenient. It makes it so easy. At least movies with 20 or 30 scenes to pick from in the Scene Selection are so convenient to look for any place in the movie that you want to. I've always loved movies on DVDs that had 20 to 30 scenes on them to choose from. Anyway, I have also seen this movie on TV before, too. But first to warn you, be careful all of you reading this who have never seen it before, because I have some spoilers written in my review here, but don't worry about reading all of this, if you've already seen this DVD. But to say, one sure thing that disappointed me about this DVD version compared to the version I've seen a lot from on TV is that this DVD version doesn't have every scene from the movie in it. This movie is not quite arranged decently. And I'll tell here why. For this DVD version, it's like they took out ten scenes, some of them were just cut shorter on this version, which all I saw on the TV version combined good with the rest of it what I saw there. Like, first of all to say, there was a scene at the bank in the early part of the movie where Ernest keeps talking about how he wants to win over a lot of others workers with how good he could be, and he says quotes like "Some have fallen. And others will fall. Like dominos in a high wind. Like, nuts from a tree. Oh yeah, they fell, etc." And that's a good part of the scene, which they could have left in for this DVD version. Then there was a scene which was where Ernest was cleaning himself up for a business date with his girlfriend from the bank where his job is, and they cut out where Ernest gets into the washing machine, and they cut out where he gets out, too, including the last half of the part where Ernest was spinning around in the washing machine, and he gets dizzy by the time he shuts it off. Now, I certainly loved that part. There was also a scene when Ernest was in jail, and the guards take him into and lock him in a visitor's center, where he encounters his look-a-like convict's girlfriend, and gets embarrassed, so much that he tries to yell to the guards to get him out, but they didn't want to, so they could watch and listen to the fondle and commotion of them from a poker table which they were playing it at, while watching and waiting until it was all over; then in the next shot of that left out scene, the guards are dragging Ernest out of there, with him looking like a beat up pulp, like he was fondled harshly. That scene was hysterical, and wish this DVD version could have left that in, too. Plus, there was a couple of escape scenes of Ernest that they took out, which I wish they would have kept in. Like, one where he passes a spot light in the night and gets curious about it and starts playing with his hands in it, not realizing what it really does, and he gets caught from doing that; plus, there was another escape scene where Ernest trys to fly over the prison-yard fence with a very long stick, and didn't quite make it, because he had one ball chained to his leg. If any of you have just seen it on DVD, then you probably noticed the part where Ernest rips off part of a guard's pant leg with a fish hook, and the guard wakes up and drops a ball down in front of him, then suddenly in the next shot, the guard is chaining two balls to him, then says "There! That ought to hold you!" On this DVD version, that leaves a pretty big plot gap, because those scenes put next to each other don't even match. For most who have only seen it on this DVD, they would wonder why Ernest suddenly deserved two balls, just after the guard dropped one ball in front of him. So, even for that sake, it was a big mistake for whoever put it on DVD to leave out the scene in between those scenes, which I know about and can fill any of you wonderers in on, where Ernest tries to fly over the prison-yard fence with one ball chained to his leg, as one of his attempts to escape. That was a humorous scene, and without it, you notice a gap somewhere in between the scenes of the guard giving him the first prison ball, then the one of the guard chaining two of them to him. There is also a scene that they cut out where Ernest is talking to his friend, Lyle after his very last attempt to escape, and before the warden comes in telling him that he will be getting out in 24 hours, and Ernest is talking to Lyle about how he has been a failure in both school and his job, and how he wishes he had done better with everything. Then there is a scene that they seemed to have altered the dialogue on this version of when Mr. Pendlesmythe the Bank Boss invites Nash (thinking he's Ernest) into his office, and part of the whole scene of them talking to each other there is cut out, too. Then there is another one cut out where he is in a cell that sentenced ones go to one step from execution, and a guard asks him why he didn't eat what he ordered for his last meal, and he tells him how he wasn't feeling up to eating at a time like that, then says "Maybe I'm coming up with something." and the Guard says "Must be the heat." And laughs. Then there is one other scene that seemed to have been left out from this DVD version, which was at the very end, just after Ernest comes down out of the sky looking like a charcoaled person from being blown up, and it is where Chuck and Bobby were trying to show the bank boss Mr. Pendlesmythe the new security system, and Ernest manages to get electrocuted again, and not all metal comes toward him that time, but then suddenly the metal cabinets start to roll toward him, he screams, and to make the end point, they smash into him. That was a proper ending for the movie. But on this DVD version, they just end with Ernest fainting after falling from the sky being blown up, instead. And that isn't quite enough to end it, where on the TV version, they did it more properly. Like, cabinets rolling fastly up to him. I think with how much is in this DVD version, that they messed it up pretty big, by not putting in every scene on this version which existed in the TV version, and possibly on the ordinary VHS version. I have never seen it on a boughten VHS version, though, so I don't how that is, and which one it is more like. But I know that they should have made this DVD version like they did the TV one I saw, where they actually had extra interesting and funny scenes on that one. At least they had one whole scene on this version which they didn't have on the TV version. Like, on the TV version, they cut out parts of the scene where Chuck and Bobby were showing Mr. Pendlesmythe the new trap bars with electricity in them that comes down from the ceiling and goes back up with remote control. Now, that was funny. Now, the movie on DVD would have been great, if they would have had every single scene and whole scene from the movie in it, and if they would have had the movie cut into more tracks in the Scene Selection, and if they would have also put all the extra stuff they could find of the movie on the DVD, too. Don't worry, I love this movie, and love the fact that I can own it on DVD, but I would have loved it even better if it would have had all of it's scenes, and was all arranged in the same decent way that it all was on TV.