SummaryBumbling Ernest P. Worrell is assigned to jury duty, where a crooked lawyer notices a resemblance with crime boss Mr. Nash, and arranges a switch. Nash assumes Ernest's job as a bank employee, while Ernest undergoes Nash's sentence to the electric chair. But instead of killing him, the electrocution gives Ernest superhuman powers, enabling him to... Read More
Directed By:John R. Cherry III
Written By:Charlie Cohen
Ernest Goes to Jail
Metascore
Mixed or Average
40
User score
Generally Favorable
7.2
My Score
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Top Cast
Metascore
Mixed or Average
0% Positive
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
73% Mixed
8 Reviews
8 Reviews
27% Negative
3 Reviews
3 Reviews
60
Kids will love it but adults may find it just too silly to sit through.
50
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]
50
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]
50
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.
40
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.
38
Ernest Goes to Jail is no yuk-a-minute - it's more a yuk-a-half-hour. [06 Apr 1990, p.4D]
25
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.
User score
Generally Favorable
67% Positive
4 Ratings
4 Ratings
33% Mixed
2 Ratings
2 Ratings
0% Negative
0 Ratings
0 Ratings
Jul 3, 2021
5
Out of all the earnest films this was, the most entertaining, because earnest has to contend with an equal and he is played by jim varney!, that's right jim varney plays the good guy and the bad guy in this movie, and proves Jim Varney had talent as an actor its a silly fun movie worth a watch for sure.
Production Company:
- Touchstone Pictures
- Silver Screen Partners IV
Release Date:Apr 6, 1990
Duration:1 h 21 m
Rating:PG
Tagline:Guilty of Maximum Fun in the First Degree!
