Ernest Scared Stupid (PG)
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This came out in 1991, but I didn't see it until 2024 (on Halloween). It's fourth film in the "Ernest" series, but the second one I've seen, after Ernest Saves Christmas. I was never planning on watching this movie, as I'm not a big fan of the character, but this year I just sort of changed my mind. I didn't like it nearly as much as the Christmas movie, but it wasn't as bad as I feared it would be.
It begins sometime in the past, like maybe a couple of centuries ago. (Wikipedia says the late 19th century, but I don't know how they arrived at that.) A troll is captured by the townsfolk of Briarville, Missouri, and under the direction of Phineas Worrell, they imprison him in a pit over which a tree is planted. The troll declares that someday he'll be freed by a descendant of Worrell's. Flash forward to the present, and Ernest P. Worrell is a buffoon who is barely holding on to his job as a sanitation worker. He's friends with a few kids named Kenny, Elizabeth, and Joey. On the day before Halloween, Elizabeth gave an oral report in school about the troll, but only Kenny took her seriously. The kids are bullied by Mayor Murdock's two sons, who destroy their makeshift haunted house. So Ernest helps them build a treehouse, which as luck would have it is in the very tree that had been planted over the troll. An eccentric woman named Old Lady Hackmore (Eartha Kitt) warns Ernest about the troll, but he doesn't take her seriously, and ends up speaking the very words that set it free.
On Halloween, the troll runs around town, turning children into wooden dolls, of which he needs to collect five in order to raise an army of trolls. Old Lady Hackmore convinces Ernest that he has to stop the troll, but he can't convince any adults in town of the danger. Kenny tries to get his father, the sheriff, to help, but he doesn't believe his son. Eventually, it's up to Ernest and a bunch of kids to defeat all the trolls, after the first one succeeds in his plan. And... I don't really want to say any more. There are other characters I don't feel are worth mentioning, plus Ernest has a dog named Rimshot. And aside from the main story, the movie is peppered with plenty of Ernest's usual nonsense, which I don't find all that amusing, for the most part. And even the troll story gets kind of silly, though I guess it could be scary to young kids. And overall, the movie is... okay. I'm glad I watched it, but I'm not sure if I'll ever watch any more Ernest movies.