FILM REVIEW : A Blithering Habitual Offender Returns

Life is real, life is Ernest. And, once again, in “Ernest Goes to Jail” (citywide), Ernest P. Worrell, lively but unreal, is upon us. All over us, in fact--and all over the map.

This demented, gangling nitwit, this blabbering buttinsky motor-mouth, the star of “Ernest Goes to Camp,” “Ernest Saves Christmas” and numerous TV commercials, is back. The man who makes Jerry Lewis look like Jeremy Irons, Don Knotts look like Don Juan, and the Three Stooges look like the Three Graces once more has us by the lapels. Yowling, blundering, falling on his face, muttering his inane battle cry, “Ya know what I mean?” We do . . . too well.

In “Ernest Goes to Jail,” he’s left the world of kiddies, camps, sentimental Santas and sleigh rides for a sappy dive into the grunge, guts and gore of life. Brutal convicts, sadistic wardens, hardball economics and life in the fast lane: They’ve all invaded the pratfalling, PG world of Ernest. “My gosh,” he exclaims when he finds his Pee-wee Herman-style kiddie-land apartment redecorated in ersatz Vegas style by an escaped con: “I’ve been vandalized . . . by Elvis!”

His wardrobe is unchanged: basic small-town creep couture, garnished with limp Levi’s, off-gray shirt and a saucy janitor’s cap. His eyes still bulge, and he hasn’t lost his penchant for drooling, hysteria or slack-jawed mugging. Yet, in “Jail,” star Jim Varney and director John Cherry, who have nurtured this calamitous oddball from the beginning, try to demonstrate new strings to their bow.

Varney, in particular, seems bent on showing off the occasional unimportance of being Ernest. This is Varney’s “Nutty Professor” role: He reveals his lady-killer side, tries to become a corn pone chameleon. In addition to playing the deranged Worrell, unnervingly accident-prone janitor at a stunningly tolerant bank, he also plays the deranged prison kingpin, Nash, an ice-hearted, lizard-eyed killer whose resemblance to Ernest triggers a predictable switcheroo. As spice, Varney offers deranged impressions of Cagney, Bogart, Walter Brennan and others. The movie’s leading lady here is a svelte young charmer named Barbara Bush; could another impersonation victim have been George?

Varney has been progressively toning down Ernest since the first movie, but director John Cherry has been getting wilder and wilder. “Jail” is crammed with crazy angles, jarring colors, film noir parodies and elaborate sci-fi effects. At one point, Ernest becomes so magnetized by a near-electrocution that he shoots off sparks and turns into a flying dynamo-man.

The inevitable Gailard Sartain and Bill Byrge pop up again, as bank guards, to do their blob-and-troll routine and Randall (Tex) Cobb makes a good nasty-nice con, won over by Ernest’s goofy ineptitude. Whether you’re won over depends on your own taste for ineptitude. Like the others in the Worrell saga, “Ernest Goes to Jail” (MPAA rated: PG) 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.