“I can’t eat on an empty stomach.”
By the time Jim Varney and John Cherry III found their niche as purveyors of zany children’s slapstick, they had been working out the peculiar personality of Ernest P. Worrell for years, with the character serving as the pitchman for amusement parks, dairy farms, soft drinks, banks, cereals, utilities, car dealerships, and fast food chains in hundreds of regional television ads. Cherry was an advertising executive, Varney a standup comic; an interesting partnership. But once they started working together their creative juices began to commingle and percolate, and after a few years of commercials (and a wacky indie sci-fi comedy called Dr. Otto and the Riddle of the Gloom Beam [1985] in which the Ernest character appears as one of several disguises of a mad scientist played by Varney), they decided to give Ernest his very own star vehicle with Ernest Goes to Camp.
Thoroughly lowbrow, although amply endearing, the film pits Ernest as a handyman turned counselor at Camp Kikakee, an all-boys summer camp where the perpetually optimistic airhead finds himself overseeing a group of merciless juvenile delinquents who chew gum and wear crop tops among other unspeakable acts. There is a scattershot plot concerning the protection of Native American land that has the depth of a kiddie pool and culminates in the noble Ernest and his band of miscreants using flaming arrows and parachuting turtles to save the day. There are also a few minor characters who provide additional antics (particularly Gailard Sartain and Daniel Butler as two moronic chefs who make a food bazooka, for lack of a better term), but the funnyman is in frame for the bulk of it, doing his funky act from start to finish. One’s like or dislike of the film will hinge entirely on their tolerance for Ernest himself.
What I appreciate about Ernest Goes to Camp (which was a childhood staple) and Jim Varney’s portrayal of the character in general, is that it is so unpretentious and unsophisticated. Varney’s brand of comedy isn’t subverting anything or taking a meta approach or whatever other cleverness—it’s just Varney making funny faces and weird noises and delivering an endless stream of consciousness monologue, conjuring up some good old folksy charm as he gets lit on fire and trampled and just generally acts like a goofball. The only time he’s not being a lovable buffoon is when he slows down to sing a melancholy song in a scene that is strangely emotive. It’s basically wholesome stuff, is what I’m trying to say. Knowhutimean, Vern?