A Masterpiece!

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Visiting a "maximum security" prison during jury duty, hapless bank janitor Jim Varney (as Ernest P. Worrell) is switched with a look-alike inmate named "Felix Nash" (also played by Mr. Varney). Now incarcerated, Ernest at first thinks he's sequestered, but he realizes he's in prison quickly enough (considering). Out of jail free, nasty Mr. Nash can't believe his good luck upon discovering he now works in a bank with kissable blonde Barbara Bush (as Charlotte Sparrow). Eventually, Ernest must set things right. In this one, Ernest has haphazard magnetic powers, which come in handy during execution.**** Ernest Goes to Jail (4/6/90) John Cherry ~ Jim Varney, Barbara Bush, Gailard Sartain, Bill Byrge

This is a really good flick with awesome humor. Jim Verney as we know was very good with facial expressions and demonstrates a lot of it in this movie.This is definitely the best of the Ernest films.I would surely recommend it to any Ernest fan out there.i find myself to have great taste in movies and I'm sure anyone will enjoy this movie. In the movie ,(Ernest) plays 2 roles, bad guy and good guy and plays them quite well. I really enjoy exaggeration type humor where things just seem impossible,like in the naked gun films for example, and there is plenty of it in this movie.I bought this movie right after i saw it. Good directing, good script, worth renting.

Though long believed to be Jim Varney's creation, the character Ernest is steeped in literary lore. This stock character was created by the expatriates in Paris during the early twenties. Several scholars have attributed it to Gertrude Stein herself, citing evidence that "Earnst" -- the name taken from Dadist Max Ernst -- was her nickname for specific ubiquitous prostitutes she more frequently solicited. This is debatable, though, since there are three specific short stories by expatriate writers using the stock Earnst character: Fitzgerald's "Earnst Isn't Rich," Joyce's "Day in the Life of the Janitor," and Hemingway's "Dead Whore on a Mountain." All of these stories, and an accumulated history on this character that was passed by some of the great writers of the twentieth century, can be found in the forthcoming "The Importance of Being Earnst," edited by Joyce Carol Oates.It was this literary tradition that led director, former ad executive, and "co-creator" John Cherry to take the dare and approach one of the days finest writers, Philip Roth, to tackle a tale of Ernest. Roth was apparently a fan of the early stories, and he took the opportunity to graft Ernest into a tale he was already writing as an expose on prisons -- a muckraking masterpiece he was concocting in the tradition of Upton Sinclair. But when Roth turned in his first draft, Cherry was surprised to find an all-prose script that involved Ernest being trapped in an Israeli prison with an sadomasochistic literary fan and Roth himself. Cherry rejected the script, citing a lack of "Knowhatimean's," though Roth would later tell confidants that Cherry was simply anti-Semitic.Cherry then gave the script to his pet arragutang to re-write. The simean grafted the script onto the other Ernest movies, including a several references to the ever-present anti-holiday-consumerism themes of "Ernest Saves Christmas." Unfortunately the arragutang, Benny, died before he could finish, and his trainer Charlie Cohen ending up getting final credit.But the tale doesn't end there. Roth and Cherry later reconciled, and this led to Roth contributing to the unfinished "Ernest the Pirate"; supposedly these scenes involve the rescue of a nubile great-granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor who was attending Columbia University before being trapped on the high seas. He also worked in thinly veiled criticisms of the Ernest movies in between "Goes to Jail" and "Pirate," including a line that went, "I've been scared stupid, I've rode again, I've slam dunked, I've even been in the army, but I've never been a pirate before. Now, suck my **** while I read Dosteyeksky."

Earnest goes to jail has to be the best, and funniest, of the earnests. the humor is pretty good, and the story is suprisingly good. it's funny how earnest always gets himself into these things. john cherry is a good director and a funny guy, even though his other earnests weren't so good.Humor 7/10Story 8.5/10Acting 6.5/10Overall 7.333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333 etc./10