The Worst Idea Of All Time - REVIEW: Ernest Saves Christmas

Episode Date: April 11, 2020

This was originally a pay-walled episode available only to Patreon supporters. Please consider if you can #PayTheBoiz at patreon.com/join/TWIOAT.Guy would like you know that the Lamont Landers Band rules.What happens when you take a human billboard and plop him inside a Christmas movie where Santa goes to jail, a 16-year-old runs away from home and ad exec John R. Cherry III just wants to get paid? The opening is a Coke ad, the man is potentially a coke addict and all I can think about is a certain coke plot at a certain airport by a certain other Tim. This movie is warm piss. Not overly offensive but nobody’s asking for it. Enjoy our third edition of the Christmas Treehouse Festival of Shit. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the past, there have been many traditional ways to celebrate Christmas. With songs, with gifts, with family and friends. There's a new way. Ho ho ho, we're with Ernest. Hello and welcome to, I've forgotten the name. It's something like the Patreon Pals Christmas Treehouse Festival of Shit. This is the third edition of four. I'm Tim Batt. I'm Guy Montgomery. And today, for your viewing pleasure, we have watched, well I

guess it's not for your viewing pleasure, you were listening to us dissect a movie that wasn't for our viewing pleasure. No one is pleasured by this. We watched Ernest Saves Christmas, everyone. A terrifying film from the 1980s featuring a human mascot who's... I did a little Googling. It turns out his sole construction was to sell products. This is a movie that is very scary because I had forgotten about Ernest. Ernest was this weird ghost from my childhood i'm 32 years old i was born in 1987 and anyone around my age particularly if you're from america will know earnest but we haven't talked about earnest for a long time we haven't thought about

him um jim varney the actor who plays him died quite a while ago. He died young, age 50. Ernest was dreamed up by... Jim Varney had achieved success as the Beverly Hillbilly, if I'm not mistaken. And Ernest was a character dreamed up by an advertising agency and then farmed out to various different large-scale commercial corporations, namely, in the instance of Ernest Saves Christmas, Coca-Cola. Oh, my God.

It is relentless. That advertising executive that you mentioned is a man named John R. Cherry III from Nashville. Ah. Do you know, I actually just passed through Nashville, Music City. Did you run into John Cherry the third or perhaps his son john cherry the fourth i did not run into any of the john cherries in spite of the fact i was frantically tearing across town asking anyone in earshot if they'd seen any of the john cherries i have a very important question to ask. I will say this,

just to give a quick tip of the hat to an incredible live music act I saw. They were called the Lamont Landers Band. They're a buttery smooth soul group from Alabama. And if you're looking for something to listen to after you listen to a podcast, why don't you get their music? Your name dropped them again?

The Lamont Landers Band. I actually looked them up after I saw the show, and Lamont Landers was a contestant on one of the seasons of America's Got Talent and did not win. I mean, it really just sounds like you're bragging about how great the road trip is, and I'm here for it. I stan your brag. Yeah.

This is from a 1987 new york times article we'll get to the movie in a second but it's important we understand what earnest is everyone earnest played by a 37 year old actor jim varney has been in more than 2600 advertisements in the past seven years i would say that number again 26,600 different ads in seven years appearing in 140 television markets he's sold everything from toyotas to sour cream the character of earnest was created by nashville advertising exec john r cherry the third as part of a campaign for an amusement park and mr cherry describes as quote so bad we couldn't show it on television the park closed three months after the campaign began but soon other companies began to feature earnest in their own commercials soon mr varney who was

trained as a shakespearean actor found himself with a new line of work movie critics have almost universally panned the film i think they're referring to to this movie that we watched um earnest saves christmas mr cherry said gleefully they hate us he said they're trying to find artistic value to something that's a purely commercial enterprise it's like an art critic reviewing a baseball card i admire mr cherry's honesty and forthright nature i mean at least they're labeling the products with what the products are you know yeah i don't think jim varney would appreciate that though here's this exec shooting his fucking mouth off while jim varney's trying to well he's entertaining the masses people fucking loved

earnest they middle america it feels like really they got on board with the character yeah but i mean it's very difficult to take a film franchise seriously if the sole entry point for the film is that the star has been in over 5 000 commercials or whatever but you can just kind of wave your hand and get people to ignore that unless you've got john r cherry the third shooting his fucking nashville mouth off telling everyone hey everyone i'm gonna say the loud bit quiet this is just to take your money it's just crazy because he's like he's a um children's entertainer really like ernest is for kids movies i shouldn't you got to do it quietly ah do you i don't know it's a real like i guess it's sort of six one half a dozen the other but i mean capitalism is so rife

here in america why not just take total ownership of it instead of dressing it up like all these giant corporations now the angle they take in is like uh you know social good or we're here to help i love i love the brazen nature of being like yeah of course the reason this exists is so we get money it's the same reason virtually everything as the world is constructed exists right now so if i can get used to i'm not going to lie to you and tell you we're aiming for the academy there um there is virtue in being that honest day somewhat right about that but um let's to the film yeah let's turn our hand to the film um you watched this more recently than me in fact i remember you were messaging me last night maybe

when you were watching um in shock and horror and how quickly we're introduced to earnest and how callously earnest treats uh the notion of human life almost immediately well first the opening frames of this film i can't remember that there's a christmas carol playing i can't remember which one it is and it's just various images of like still drawing sketches of santa cla specifically the Coca-Cola one, specifically holding a Coca-Cola, specifically with the label pointed at the camera. So you just, this film opens and it's just lots of bottles of Coke being held by Santa in different positions

while a Christmas carol plays in some credits role. And it's, I mean, once again, there's something very refreshing about the honesty. Just going, hey guys, this is why we made this. It's like, all right, cool. Thanks for telling me right up front so I know what I'm getting in for. But then weirdly, I mean, you do see a little bit of Coke. There's not a ton of gross product placement in this film.

Except weirdly Bic. Bic pens. Yeah. I guess we'll get to that. It feels like they just bookend with Coca-Cola. It's like they top and towel it. They go, this is a commercial property of the Coca-Cola company. And then you watch a movie.

And at the end of the feature presentation, they go, brought to you by Coca-Cola. Bro, do you know what I've just realized? Jim Varney and John Archer the third are the old version of adam sandler and what like that's why this movie freaked me out so much because it was seeing like proto sandler oh yeah found a way to roll those two things into one he is a producing powerhouse and the actor he's the performer and the guy who's got nestle on the phone trying to get a deal done for kit kats a hundred percent sorry i the end was not um dismissive it was more like who is sandler's running mate who is the sandler and sandler that's his firm yeah yeah i see he's it's his name twice i love that yeah i actually did good at that

too i can't i can't remember if i told you this recently i did a lot a bit of research into sandler's use of uh kmart and grown-ups too or i was tracking kmart's financial performance uh like in synchronicity parallel to um the release of the grown-ups to film and it was it came on you're getting weird out there man i love it what did you find what did you do it came on the back end of three years of a huge slide um when the high street was struggling to make sales and came out stores were closing by their hundreds across america because they were struggling to keep up with you know amazon and digital ordering and whatnot. And then, I mean, it genuinely supports the theory that Kmart did throw whatever marketing budget

they had left at an Adam Sandler vehicle. And whether coincidental or not, I mean, it didn't... They lived. Yeah, it didn't turn the performance of the company around entirely, but it certainly plateaued what was a pretty emphatic slide. Well done, new age Ernest. So we're all about the same man, but he gets results. Yeah.

Well, this movie, after we get done with the Coca-Cola commercial, opens on Ernest as a cab driver, furiously trying to ferry his cab, his fare rather to the airport in a hurry there's a man who needs to catch a flight and he's just driving like a fucking maniac um which is a great way to start a comedy you know kids film big action it's cool but uh well not but and he definitely performs maneuvers that kill the person who is in the back seat of his car not wearing a seat belt there's a lot of um high high g's turning uh to the point in which it looks like he he becomes quite limp like he's yeah spinal column or something he's a lifeless body in the back

there he's just driving around a corpse at this point and um then there's like uh a christmas tree truck and a tiny christmas tree falls off the back of it and earnest um almost killed several more people while he stops his car in the middle of the freeway to pick it up and causes a lot of traffic uh crashes around him which is cool and then um the guy's like we're gonna miss my flight oh yeah then earnest like throws the little christmas tree into the back with this passenger and smashes his own window which i thought was really funny just because of how like we're dealing with an absolute madman and i love that people were taking their kids to see earnest being like we all love earnest earnest is a good guy and i'm looking at this movie going, this is a coke addict, who for

some reason is driving cabs. He is an absolute chaos agent, but what is not to love about it? Because while this is being established, that Ernest is a devil-may-care cab driver with scant consideration for human

life, we're also meeting the, I guess, the essence or the crux of the film, which is that Santa Claus is real. Yes. And exists in the human world as an ordinary person, introduces himself as Santa Claus, so is unaware of the idea that it's unusual to other people

that they are Santa, and even more confusingly, has to travel to Orlando, Florida. Yeah. But it's all perfectly well explained in the movie. So when Ernest finally gets his guy to the airport, that's where Santa is, just getting off of his flight as well um from the

north pole and so santa is there because there is a children's entertainer in orlando florida who's been doing a children's show on public access tv and he's a real sweetheart we love him if you've seen death to smoochie it's kind of like um ed norton's character but without the kind of slightly psycho but it's just a pure-hearted children's entertainer who cares about his job cares about the kids and so santa has selected this children's entertainer to be the next santa claus and the current santa claus has been santa for oh i think he says that he's 151 years old so presumably over a century he's been santa and he um he gets into like i love the world building in this so the way that it works is the magical powers of santa

wane over time and completely refresh when a new santa comes in so they're at a hard deadline of they've got to transfer the position of santa to this new guy by 7 p.m or else uh the magical powers will sort of dissipate to the extent where the concept of father christmas is threatened itself and then in amongst this happening we've got the 80s intruding in this movie um in the form of and again another coked up character who's this high velocity hollywood uh executive this agent who is trying to grab the children's entertainer and throw him into highly commercial movies in some sort of meta reference to the fact that earnest exists solely to hawk off toyotas and sour cream i guess and um which is kind of a crazy thing to do because then

earnest is the antagonist in a meta way but we're rooting for him kind of in the world of the film itself it's very fucking artful if you really drill in but you shouldn't i yeah i and hearing you outline it all again i suppose i'm i'm just thinking about it in an immediate comparison to um christmas with the cranks which bothered me which is like at least this one right from the jump acknowledges it's you know it's balls to the wall out there like they've got a lot of moving parts uh it's it's it's it's confidently silly and stupid and big and loud, which... And honestly, that's all you need. If you're going to do slapstick and high-fars like all the Ernest movies are,

as long as you're strident, fine. Good. All sweet. It's fine. I personally find Ernest terrifying, and this is quite a rude thing to say, but his face is crazy and scary to me and the way they shoot it is also very scary because one of the kind of things about earnest as a character and it's not just in this movie but it's in all the i looked up some commercials they really play

on the fact that he's got quite a um he's got quite a big face jim varney he's got a rubber a rubber face real rubbery face and there's a lot of it and they use a wide angle lens so they chuck the camera right up to his face so it's quite a um it's not an angle you would normally use in filmmaking at all it's quite grotesque because it puts you right like you as an audience member are right up in this guy's grill and it's quite confronting a lot of the time and i tell you what it's sort of i think it like triggered some childhood fear of this earnest character who i would occasionally brush up against as a kiwi child like a child in new zealand it's like there was a vague awareness of all of these earnest movies it is it is there is certainly a grotesque quality to the way

that parts of earnest character is shot that i don't know if it was grotesque at the time or it's just the way we've consumed media now it makes you feel somewhat uneasy but um it does a great job of like you know communicating this larger than life personality he gets through a lot of character work in the film like earnest assumes various different disguises or personas to try and hoodwink uh people who are pretty much i mean i guess i'm gonna i'm gonna get back into plot here but as i recall uh santa arrives at this place where the children this sort of washed up children's entertainer is talking to some of the kids and he's ready to tell him you know or to scout him and say hey you're you're gonna be the new center and then this big swinging hollywood agent comes along and says hey we've got

this opportunity intercepts uh the actor before san can get to him or the children's entertainer says we've got this big opportunity for you to be in a film and then santa sort of keeps trying to press his point and the agent dismisses him and says he's crazy and calls the police on him. And so you've then got this fun and games where Ernest has to free Santa from prison and help reunite him with the children's entertainer who's taking on this movie job to revive his career

before Christmas, or there might not be any Christmas this year. Yes. And along the way, there are japes to be had there are also there's um there's another character we haven't mentioned yet called harmony um which is like she's a runaway i think she's 16 she's like 15 or 16 and she's kind of this smart-mouthed hard-nosed new york city girl she from new york i feel like she is that's just you know that's the archetype and she's run away from her parents and um she is

introduced in the film by doing a dine and dash and then jumping into the cab with earnest with santa in there um which is great she gets in the car and Ernest is like, hi, I'm Ernest, this is Santa Claus. And she's like, cool. Florida, baby. Yeah. I guess, you know, God knows what sorts of lunatics you're running into in your day-to-day life if you have to stay away in Florida. But she appears to be unfazed until,

I don't know, like, the movie gets a bit confused for a minute. Like, the whole Santa thing gets a bit confused for me like the whole santa thing gets a bit confusing where it's like people have to reckon with their relationship to santa and i guess coming brushing up against the real santa instills the idea that he's real he's got this trick he uses where he keeps um he keeps saying uh people's names when he says santa and people look at him skeptically he goes

alright then Ricky and Ricky goes hoo hoo it's a good very low energy magic trick isn't it

and a very easy thing to like there's a lot of ways you could get someone's full name steal the wallet without them looking put the wallet

back in their pocket but in the intervening period have a look at their ID. I want to do that and pretend I'm Santa. It's a classic. If you do that and you're not Santa, you're just a thief. A thief and a snoop. Speaking of Santa, actually, I just remembered one of the big laugh lines for me,

or one of the parts of the film I enjoyed, was when he is in prison. He's in federal prison, and he corrals the other felons into singing I can't remember the exact carol. Is it Deck the Halls? Possibly. And he's in like a cell with all of these other offenders and he gets them all to do it and then he sort of leans out.

He puts his hand out of the bars and there's a either a soprano or a bass but there's some other register of singer down the way a few cells down who sings the beautiful concluding uh line of the song and i thought that was the that the way that entire scene was constructed and executed i was uh very impressed by i really enjoyed it there was bloody lovely it was like there's some yeah there's some baritones in solitary confinement who pipes in from off camera it's bloody good i tell you what these earnest movies

probably got hyper efficient because they are just shutting out commercials and movies i don't know where this comes in the canon but there's there's like a dozen earnest movies and this is you know in the middle somewhere so they probably managed to shit this thing out in a few weeks i reckon and you can kind of tell in a way there's like there's not enough story they keep going back to stuff so first of all the duration isn't huge it's 94 minutes or something like that and they keep going back to stuff where it's like really wafer thin as the premise to put a whole scene in namely they keep returning to the fact that some flying reindeer have been delivered to these uh warehouse workers and they don't know what to do with the

animals so it's like the first time we check in we see the box one of them punches their hoof through i think which is pretty terrifying through the box because they're very strong and the recurring gag is that one of the two guys in the warehouse who's looking after the package is coming in he um sort of shimmies his eyes to and fro really quickly and does that sound effect over it and that's the punch line to every scene with them which is fucking crazy so we check in once we see the hoof come through or something like that and then we check in the next time and uh the reindeer have come out and they're eating like hay and they're trying to identify what these animals are and they call them like you know mexican goats or something

and then we go back to the movie and then we go back to that scene again and they've called pest animal control and animal control come but suddenly the reindeer are stuck to the roof it's just like we return to these dudes about six times for no reason in particular and spent quite a lot of time well this and the punchline is always this supports your sandler theory because these are old earnest collaborators so this is an instance of taking care of your guys. These are the Peter Dantes of the world. The Alan Kovitz, the Nick Swartzens. These guys are literally just like in on the fucking,

in on the earnest gravy train. Because if you had the opportunity to bring your friends along for the ride, you're going to bang out a film away from your family for five weeks in Orlando, Florida. Why the hell wouldn't you you know uh populate the set with people who you can go and play basketball with in your downtime what do you reckon jim varney and john r cherry the third sort of version of um of going off to play basketball was because without casting dispersions maybe it was just the 80s but i suspect doing more cocaine yeah it wouldn't be a huge surprise john he was the director of this i just saw mr cherry oh really yeah he like good for him incredible self-made man yeah way to elevate your own standing from uh a guy working at an ad agency

in nashville to a guy directing hollywood movies in orlando that's a that's a yeah that's a great american story isn't it bootstraps hyper capitalism um it's all good stuff hey can i throw this at you guy i've forgotten the children's entertainer's name but when he shaves his beard off does he not look the spitting image and sound quite a lot quite a lot like david harbour from stranger things yeah i thought i thought that when i saw him he certainly does bear a passing resemblance once he goes beardless um i kind of thought it was him i kept doing this thing where i was like when this movie come out how's he in this it's not him doesn't make any sense

but man it looked like him this movie came out in 1988 november 11 i was two months old not even that how about that i was one and a half months old. And they were still making movies, even though I couldn't yet consume them. Isn't that crazy? Why were they doing it? That's what I think. It's like some bands will put out an album that I don't listen to, and then they'll release another album after that. I'm like, guys.

It's fucked. Someone should tell you. I stopped listening. It's a bad model, isn't it? Everyone needs to pay attention to what Guy's stopped listening It's a bad model isn't it Everyone needs to pay attention to what guy's doing It's chaos Um Hey um can I ask you another question

I wish you would The cab that Ernest is driving In this film is very Prominently number 69 On the rank Do you think that was intentional or one freaking 100 percent um yeah same that number's been nice since the dawn of time and there's no reason to think that in the 80s they suddenly stopped remembering that for a year it's too big of a coincidence

it's one for the dad so it's a selling shot yeah it's a bloody hey you know what we're here to earn a paycheck and you know make some kids laugh along the way but we're also we're here to have a bit of fun we're here to simultaneously smash genitals into each other's faces um i just for full clarity for those listening by the way i uh watched this earnest film about 10 days ago um so you'll have to excuse sort of any gaps in my memory or the inability to muster the appropriate amounts of enthusiasm i remember there was a scene where he is bit on the face by several snakes at one point man i am trying to remember how this makes sense in the plot but he goes to a hollywood lot like where there's a film being shot and poses as a snake like what do you call

him snake wrestler sort of like a wrangler a snake wrangler and um really like grub grubbies up his face he's got a lot of oil on his face and uh sort of adopts an affect of a lower class working man driving his truck in his pickup full of snakes and i don't know i can't remember what he's trying to smuggle into the lot there's something under the sheet is it like is it is it a person yeah i think it's santa it's santa under the sheet yeah i think they're trying to get s Santa in because he's not allowed because he's been gone to prison and people don't want to deal with him or something. Yeah, fuck.

I watched this yesterday. I should know that bit. And then they dump real snakes on top of him. Yeah. But wait a minute. That's not even the bit where he gets bit. There's two different bits with snakes in this movie. Look. Because I don't think that even the bit where he gets bit There's two different bits with snakes in this movie Look

Because I don't think that's the bit where he gets bit He gets bit on the face in a completely different scene You want to make A commercial Christmas property You've got to break a few snakes And that is A well known and respected Saying in this industry

Well snakes are very important to uh christmas because of course in the christian tradition you know snakes snakes are very important they're evil um the evil serpent they're tempt temptresses tempters you know adam and eve with the apple manipulative bastards also by the way everyone if you're sitting there at home wondering whether or not santa manages to hand over the reins of his job and his reindeer to this children's entertainer he does and if you're sitting there also wondering whether or not santa manages to get his end off it is heavily implied that he does that as well um so weird such a strange um loose end that didn't exist that they insisted on tying up it's like

well we got to make sure santa gets laid right yeah i mean everyone's waiting with bated breath to find out if this guy's going to get his 151 year old dick wet he does him and uh the the she works at the children's hospital introduced early on i believe the character's name is mary they it's very sweet actually yeah we're um interpreting through a cynical lens what could be just a very lovely romantic relationship older people old people smash as well tim and it's ages of you to think that just because santa's 150 and m Mary appears to be about 65 to 70, they're going to go off and fucking absolutely blast each other sideways with multiple orgasms.

What are the ethics on that? If you're a 151-year-old sort of super paranormal being who's human mostly. The urban legend rule is what? Half your age plus seven. Yeah, you got it. What's half of 150? Is 75 plus seven 82?

It's borderline. It'll be papped. I'll tell you what. I'll be in the news. I'll be saying, meet Santa Claus's hot young piece of ass is it manipulative of him to be dating a 70 70 year old or whatever and that's that's the floridian press for you as well the story is not we found a 151 year old man and also a santa claus

check out this elderly couple that fucking smash let's talk about their sex life let's get into it yeah uh hot you know spoiler alert everyone lubricant look we've gone down a dastardly path um and very unearnest as well uh both both you know earnest the character and the word itself it's better it's a fine film isn't it what do you think of it overall like take a zoom out did you do you remember enjoying it totally okay maybe two and a half stars like honestly you're not gonna seek it out and put it on but if you're in a hotel and you're flicking through channels and it's on it's probably got enough action and it's sort of got an interesting enough gloss on it. Like it's over time in a way that you'd stop and you'd watch it for five, ten minutes.

You wouldn't engage. You'd be on your phone within a minute, but it would be on and you'd be like, oh, yeah. And then if someone said, oh, have you seen this movie, Ernest Saves Christmas? You would lie and say, yeah, I did. I watched it in a hotel room once. And then they would start talking about it in explicit detail. and you would realize that you didn't really watch it you only saw a little bit of it and even then you didn't pay attention but instead of being honest and saying i actually only saw a little bit of it in a hotel room you would say yeah yeah and you'd listen to them explain things in detail and you would just nod

along and you wouldn't be able to contribute to the conversation because you told a white lie to begin with what you should have done is this person i don't know but i'm just saying be honest okay i think it would be a really interesting movie to watch if you were a parent of a child now who's like maybe 10-ish, sort of from maybe 8 to 12, and you sat down and watched Ernest Saves Christmas with them, because it exists as a real trapped in ember artifact of the mid-80s. And it was a really weird time. Just so unabashedly american so confidently capitalist and i don't know there's just something so big and strident and confident about this movie that doesn't seem to exist anymore everything now

is very meta and uh winking at the camera breaking the fourth wall you know everything's can't can't be just fully for lack of a better term fully earnest but my man fittingly earnest saves christmas is just very it's very earnest um and it's it's weird and i'll be interested to know what uh 10 year olds take is on the harmony character as well well It's like it's all It's all good they skate Right up to the thin ice But then back away from it very quickly Which is good where

Ernest has a I'm gonna say He's slightly too Happy to get a kiss on the cheek From her at the end but we don't dwell on it And I'm like thank god It's suggested to me that Ernest is like sexless uh sort of you know freak almost that's not the right way to describe sexless people but like earnest specifically is not he doesn't exist on the spectrum of sexuality that ordinary humans do he's like yeah yeah some sort of elastic idiot who just uh understands the

idea of attraction and sexuality but not as it applies to him and so he's gumby he's yeah and he's like he he's not afforded the luxury of you know long-standing meaningful human connection so anytime there's some sort of physical representation of connection he responds to it as anyone would in his situation with like genuine excitement and over, you know, glee. Yeah. I guess it's the fact that Ernest is a child trapped in a 45 year old, very strange looking man's body. He's not unattractive.

He's just got a very strong look does Ernest. And they really go to town with it by making Jim Varney. Well, probably Jim Varney makes himself. He knows that he's got a rubbery face. He uses it to great effect. They're very specifically using cameras which highlight that fact.

And it all adds up to a terrifying experience for anyone under the age of eight. But if you're a little bit older and you can handle it, you know, it's an interesting watch. If for nothing else, just to be like, this was 1988.

Yeah, they made this movie even though Guy Montgomery couldn't pay to watch it. I'm going to list all of Ernest's other feature-length properties, and I want you to tell me which one you want to see the most. Ernest goes to camp. Ernest goes to jail. Ernest scared stupid. Ernest rides again. I'll stop you there.

Definitely to jail. Ernest scared stupid. Ernest rides again. I'll stop you there. Definitely to jail, right? Well, Ernest goes to school. Slam dunk Ernest. Ernest goes to Africa. And Ernest in the army. Yeah, I'm definitely going to rest on jail. That's the movie I want to see.

How does the plot go for that? You tell me. Ernest, in a real rookie maneuver, gets caught up in a botched drug deal involving 650 grams of pure cocaine, $42,000 in cash, in an international airport in michigan unfortunately he is used as a sort of an unwitting mule to make the exchange um they've picked the international airport

completely arbitrarily in fact it was the idea of a fucking idiot who saw it on a tv movie once and thought that it would be a good idea to go to an international airport one of the most heavily policed areas for drugs so they instructed Ernest to get out of the car carry the 650 grams

of cocaine in and put it in a locker and he got that bit done totally fine. Where are you getting your ideas? Look, this is just the top of my dome. I'm spitballing here. Okay. No bad ideas in a brainstorm. Yeah, yeah.

And then he, so he's got the key, and he's supposed to put that, like, under a rubbish bin or something, probably, tape it to under a rubbish bin for someone to find it, and then the Federales show up uh and they've been scattered all through the airport um they pull their guns out and ernest is going to federal prison and so he's facing now is a a man with a lot of life left in front of him and a lot of potential a lot to give the world he's faced with quite a heartbreaking decision to make he can either

save his own skin by ratting out both his friends and his enemies so he's not only burning personal relationship bridges with with people he cares about in the drug community the drug dealer community specifically um but he's also painting a big target on his back by ratting out up to 20 co-drug dealers so that he can reduce his sentence from what would presumably be a life sentence down to i'm gonna say two years and four months like serve quite a departure from the sort of uh high-flying fancy free sort of uh vaguely unreal that Ernest has so carefully built. This sounds a lot like sort of a medium end drug crime that is rooted in reality. Okay.

This is the comedy of it, Guy, because how fucking daft would you have to be to bring that amount of cocaine to an international airport and not for the purpose of flying with it, but just to select a location to make a trade? That is... Like, how absolutely thick would you need to be to do that? That is distinctly earnest, and I respect that. I will tell you this...

A real person would never do that. You're gone. You're close. The actual plot is bumbling earnest 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 escape from jail and foil Nash's attempt to rob the bank you're joking me bruh is that really the plot yep now there you go before we had the marvel

cinematic universe we had a man a child comedy character threatened with electrocution by the state uh gaining superpowers and freeing himself from prison. What a wonderful romp for your kid. They say Hollywood doesn't know how to laugh at itself. That's enough, man. We've been recording for hours, you and I. Yeah, but more importantly, I think that's all there is to say about Ernest Saves Christmas. It's a weird movie.

It's a fine movie. It's a fine movie. It's an interesting relic of the past. And R.I.P. Jim Varney, a very talented performer. Truly, R.I.P. Jim Varney. Thank you so much to everyone for listening and contributing to the Patreon.

Thank you, of course, to Tim, who I love and miss and will be seeing at the height of the New Zealand summer so very soon. Couldn't be looking more forward to it, Guy. I will see you soon. We will see all our pals in the next episode of the Patreon Pals Christmas Treehouse Festival of Shit Edition. Goodbye.

Ernest saves Christmas.