Ernest Goes to Jail

Kids will love it but adults may find it just too silly to sit through. Read full review

Ernest Goes to Jail so resembles a high-spirited cartoon that it is likely to be more amusing to children and less painfully obnoxious for parents than its predecessors. Read full review

Ernest Goes to Jail is directed by John Cherry, the adman who created the character. And hard as it is to admit it, Cherry is getting better -- better at making endearing an annoying pea-brained pitchman. Read full review

Ernest movies would still seem to be an acquired taste, but this one affords the adult viewer a few unexpected pleasures. Read full review

Whether you're won over depends on your own taste for ineptitude. Like the others in the Worrell saga, Ernest Goes to Jail is a movie with couch-potato stylistics and switching-channel logic. Watching it is like sitting with a lukewarm TV dinner for an hour or so, while somebody tries to pound you into a Smurf. [09 Apr 1990, p.F12]

Ernest Goes to Jail is a cute picture, good for what it is, which isn't much, but that's OK. [07 Apr 1990, p.C3]

Last week, it was Ninja Turtles. This week, it's Ernest. And Ernest, quite frankly, is an improvement. It's more colorful, cartoonish, imaginative. And it feels like a movie, not just an advertising ploy. [07 Apr 1990, p.C5]

This is the kind of film most of us don't really want to admit we've seen, let alone laughed at. Nevertheless, Ernest Goes To Jail gives Varney fans more or less what they expect, and they keep coming back for more. Read full review

Ernest Goes to Jail is no yuk-a-minute - it's more a yuk-a-half-hour. [06 Apr 1990, p.4D]

The script tries to work up sympathy for a character who’s not much more than the bastard trailer-park spawn of Jerry Lewis. Sadly, this is everything you ever thought an Ernest movie would be. Read full review

The film is never arresting, though it's arrestable -- throw it in the clink and throw away the key. [13 Apr 1990, p.G11]