Christmas: Jingle All the Way (1996)

Moving right along with the Christmas/Holidays marathon, Netflix just added back Jingle All The Way.  We had the sequel sitting there for the longest time but I didn’t think it right to see it before the original and honestly, it looked kind of bad.  Still, I’m happy this one came back.  So, I gave it a go the other night. Man, when was the last time I saw Arnold Schwarzenegger in a movie? I can’t even remember..maybe Total Recall a few years back or…Expendables?

Let’s check it out! 🙂

Jingle All The Way (1996)

Director: Brian Levant

Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rita Wilson, Sinbad, Phil Hartman, Robert Conrad, Jake Lloyd

A father vows to get his son a Turbo Man action figure for Christmas, however, every store is sold out of them, and he must travel all over town and compete with everybody else in order to find one.-IMDB

I went through this just last week when I was talking about Yours, Mine and Ours and family comedy. Sometimes, we have characters played by actors that don’t exactly match or excel in it.  I’m guessing you already figured out that I’m talking about Arnold Schwarzenegger. That’s like Dwayne Johnson doing The Tooth Fairy. I’m not saying that they aren’t father figures but they are one liner guys.  Their characters resound because they don’t need to talk much and they just have catchy one-liners and that works for them in action flicks. Stick them into family comedies and they turn into these creepy dudes with awkward lines and apologies.  C’mon! Arnold is the man! He doesn’t need to apologize 😉

Getting past that, Jingle All The Way has its fun moments.  It definitely does.  However, it is also really formulaic and predictable.  I’m forgiveable most of the time about these things.  Its for kids and its holiday movies.  Its supposed to be a little silly and all that jazz.  I’m down with all of that.  This one didn’t make me feel too much and not to mention those 1996 effects.  Those effects were…ha, ha, ha! I don’t even have an adjective for them. Arnold turns into Turbo Man. Thats okay.  I can go with that but tell me what technology let the guys disguised as our superheroes with a jet pack fly into the sky.  If that’s the case, I demand one for this year’s Christmas parade for any flying superhero 😉 It should be totally doable now that its almost 20 years after this movie was released.

Jingle All The Way is pretty harmless.  It tries its hardest to pull all the tropes out to make this funny.  There’s some funny moments when Arnold and Sinbad are battling it out to find that Turboman doll.  Then there’s the extremely exaggerated and even more over the top moments with the neighbor Ted (Phil Hartman) trying to sweep Arnold’s wife, played by Rita Wilson from him.  That was just so weird and creepy all at the same time.

In the end, Jingle All The Way did have its moments.  Arnold did some silly fighting.  He had to claw through crowds and get laughed at.  He was Turboman and made up with his family and he learned the importance of keeping his promises and how his family should be placed number one. The message is there and its a innocent little family comedy.  I’m not exactly sure about seeing Arnold Schwarzenegger in  family comedy but it still has some fun moments. Its not exactly a holiday classic but its pretty harmless so I’d watch it if it was playing on TV or whatnot.

Have you seen Jingle All The Way?