Jingle All the Way

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When you think of the holidays, you always think of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Maybe you just think of Arnold all the time. Which fits perfectly into the Xmas spirit theme for this film -- don't learn any lessons of Christmas, don't change how you feel about life and commit heinous crimes in the search of consumerism that you fail to accomplish.

Beyond how unbelievably bad it is overtly, I mostly want to talk about its failures for being a Christmas movie (as is tradition for our holiday specials). The primary problem here is that it can't even be an Xmas movie. It's a movie that takes place during Christmas (kiss my ass, all who say Die Hard is a Christmas movie), but it fails to achieve any Spirit of Christmas themes (hell, even The Star Wars Holiday Special manages that). 

Here's where people will say it makes a Christmas movie:

1. It takes place during Xmas 
2. Howard (Arnold's character) restores his relationship with his son via Christmas
3. It shows the consumerism of Christmas and man's greed during the holiday season but Howard finds a way to be better than that.

Here's the rub in order:

1. So what? Troll 2 is about eating food, does that mean it's a Thanksgiving movie? This line of logic that says "A film takes place on X time so therefore it's a holiday film because a major holiday is shown within it" is garbage.

2. Howard does NOT restore his relationship with his son via Christmas because this is clearly not the first time their relationship has been damaged/repaired within the same day. It's quite clear that this crap happens all the time. It's just Tuesday.... and also happens to be Christmas. In order to make this message, the time of Christmas and all its "holly jolly - be nice to your neighbors and family" stuff must be the vehicle for learning your lesson, not just the backdrop of this weeks poor fathering/becoming a good father debacle.

3. Sure, it does show people being manic during the holiday season. However, Howard doesn't rise above it or even partake in it for the resolution of the movie. The film can't even make the (bad) statement that if you buy toys for your kids, they'll have a good Christmas. Because Howard doesn't even buy the toy. He falls bass-ackwards into the toy. Basically, someone mistakenly hands it to him and he hands it to his son and takes all the credit for getting it. Completely not the spirit of Christmas (even the cynical take of it's another corporate holiday). Bleh.

It stinks, really, really, really bad. It's cringe-worthy in points. The written jokes are terrible. The effects are worse than PumaMan. But it's a must do for all. It's a staple in holiday films and the one you can always go to when you're tired of all the traditional movies and the staples of the season. Watch this and try to hide your own cynicism from your grandma. Screw her. She's a blatant racist.

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Streaming Do's and Don'ts

• Starship Apocalypse - Amazon Prime
• Pet Sematary II - Amazon Prime

About Jingle All the Way - Movie Information

Sam's Boring Bullshit

“We got the rights to Jingle All The Way 2!”, should have been ecstatically stated by no one in history ever. Vince McMahon or possibly one of his employees, however, most likely said something to that effect, as 18 years after this pile of crap flopped like fresh bologna, WWE Studios released Jingle All The Way 2, starring Larry the Cable Guy. I guess when you’re that rich bad movies can be like auxiliary ivory back scratchers or golden toilets. You have to spend some of it on something.

The original film was supposed to be a multi-pronged approach to cleaning up on the holiday season Hollywood style. Soundtracks were still huge, so they got an expensive soundtrack with big names. Toys were big, so they made a toy. Tragically it was the bozos at 20^th Century Fox that decided to do this, in or around August of the same year. They tried to slam-dunk a "get us all the cash deal" in under six months. The soundtrack blows ass and the toy was a $25 13” 4 joint job that didn’t sell because that style of doll, the original G.I. Joe, had been out of favor for about 40 years.

The budget of the film was reported at $60 million but was actually $75 million, Fox and Friends had apparently been trying to steal the Canon Groups moves. It made back around $60 million domestically and after the rest of the marketing budget went to stocking land fills with bad CDs and toys no one wanted this thing was vintage Fox execution.

J.A.T.W. was produced by professional Christmas carpet bagger Chris Columbus. Bryan Levant was brought on to direct after he had two mega hits, Beethoven (the dog) and The Flintstones. Thought this would fail financially both figures would return to the Christmas movie gravy train.

The cast includes heavyweights, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Phil Hartman, Rita Wilson, Robert Conrad and Sinbad. I have seen Sinbad’s act around 6 or 7 times, therefore I have seen him say “partay” 243 times. I would like to trash the Sinbad a little more but he and a handful of his contemporaries accomplished the seemingly impossible task of bringing black comedy to a mass audience, so go ahead and paaartaayy.

KAEOF: with the knowledge that Schwaz made $20 million, where did the other $55 million go?