Storyline
Bumbling Ernest P. Worrell 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.
Directors
Writers
Cast
Trailer
Reviews
60
Empire
Kids will love it but adults may find it just too silly to sit through.
50
Ernest Goes to Jail so resembles a high-spirited cartoon that it is likely to be more amusing to children and less painfully obnoxious for parents than its predecessors.
50
Ernest Goes to Jail is directed by John Cherry, the adman who created the character. And hard as it is to admit it, Cherry is getting better -- better at making endearing an annoying pea-brained pitchman.
50
Ernest movies would still seem to be an acquired taste, but this one affords the adult viewer a few unexpected pleasures.
50
Los Angeles Times
Whether you're won over depends on your own taste for ineptitude. Like the others in the Worrell saga, Ernest Goes to Jail 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. [09 Apr 1990, p.F12]
