SLAM DUNK ERNEST
A film review by Andrew Hicks
Copyright 1996 Andrew Hicks / Fatboy Productions
(1995) *1/2 (out of four)
I used to love Ernest movies. When the vest-clad redneck got torn apart by an unseen badger in ERNEST GOES TO CAMP, I laughed my elementary school head off. When he got into the fight with the electric floor buffer in ERNEST GOES TO JAIL, I chuckled my junior high head off. When he triumphed against the troll in ERNEST SCARED STUPID, I at least smiled my high school head off. But my college head mostly shook back and forth in disgust during SLAM DUNK ERNEST, the direct-to-video feature in which Ernest becomes the token whitey on a city-league basketball team.
Not that I expected SLAM DUNK ERNEST to be any good. My friends and I rented the video because we love to watch really bad movies and crack jokes during them, and as far as that goes, it more than served its purpose. That's why I have to stress that this isn't a bad review -- a movie like this can only provide a very mild and cheap form of entertainment, which SLAM DUNK ERNEST does. For you parents of small children out there, this will most likely entertain anyone who hasn't reached puberty. But if you don't fall into either of those two groups, I don't have to warn you to stay off the SLAM DUNK ERNEST court.
Ernest P. Worrell (alter-ego of Jim "Jed" Varney) this time plays a janitor who works with a group of stereotypical jive-talking, basketball-playing black men. All his life he's wanted to gain acceptance in macho circles by playing basketball with the guys, and he finally talks his way into their locker room, which he refers to in awe as the "temple of testosterone." They don't let him play, but Ernest -- in all his incompetence -- manages to lose the game for them from the bench. So needless to say, the jive talkers are mad, and they hit him where it hurts. "You're not just white, you're a redneck!" one of them yells.
But the redneck soon has the upper hand when his Angel of Basketball, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, shows up in the temple of testosterone and gives him a pair of magic basketball shoes. "Don't misuse the shoes," he warns before heading off to cash his check and try to forget he ever signed up to appear in this movie. So Ernest is left alone with the shoes, which attach themselves to his feet and squeak-talk to him like the cockroaches in JOE'S APARTMENT, an even-worse movie than this.
You can guess what happens after that. One of the jive talkers gets sick and Ernest gets put in the game, flying all over the court like his feet are made of flubber. He becomes the star of the game and gets an ego, actually trading in his vest and hat for a tuxedo. Egging him on the entire time are an evil NBA scout and the mousy lotto employee he's always had a crush on. Predictably, there's a scene in which she takes off her glasses, lets down her hair and suddenly becomes gorgeous.
Meanwhile, the son of one of the jive talkers begins emulating Ernest (in a tragic case of race defection), going so far as to steal a pair of the same $250 shoes (ironically, the price of the shoes exceeds the entire budget of SLAM DUNK ERNEST). Luckily, Jabbar shows up in an ice cream truck -- the Ice Kareem Man -- to help talk him out of it. The movie is stupid, shallow and predictable, just how an Ernest movie should be. And if you can watch it with a group of joke-cracking teenage boys, I strongly recommend it.
--
Visit the Movie Critic at LARGE homepage at http://www.missouri.edu/~c667778/movies.html Serving America For Over 1/50 of a Century!
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews