Tagline: Two Dads, One Toy, No Prisoners.
Curiosity: It’s Arnold Brownschwagger and Sinbad in a movie about how kids make Christmas suck. It’s the kind of film that sums up everything I’ve ever felt.
Plot: Hardworking dad Howard (Schwarzenegger) can only find one way to get his shitty son Jamie (Jake Lloyd) to love him: through material possessions. Sadly, all of his attempts to build a stable home environment and college fund for his son are for naught, as the only thing Jamie craves is a Turboman doll. Love, security, education… these things hold no meaning to Jamie and his twisted plastic addiction. It’s not until Howard’s wife Liz (Rita Wilson) mentions that the toy will be neigh impossible to find this time of year that he realizes the hell he has entered.
The next morning – Christmas Eve – he embarks on a journey of epic Lord of the Rings proportions to find the got-damned toy. His enemies are many: Myron (Sinbad), a rival father also looking for the action figure; Officer Hummell (Robert Conrad), the malicious cop looking to abuse his authority over Howard; Ted (Phil Hartman), a neighborhood lothario out to seduce Liz; and Santa Claus (James Belushi), a mysterious man who may not be what he seems.
Thoughts: At a tight 85 minutes, Jingle All the Way never stops punishing Howard with one obstacle after another, building towards a series of twists that no one could possibly see coming. There’s just no gosh dang way. Yet he pushes, oh Lord how he pushes. That’s what gives Jingle All the Way its inspirational edge; Howard’s determination to get the job done. At the same time, though, this is one of the saddest Christmas movies I’ve ever seen. Forget The Christmas Shoes; Jingle All the Way is about one man’s insane devotion to his child, which is depressing because of how irredeemably terrible that child is. Jamie yell-whines at everyone and everything without the slightest provocation. He has a Captain America mural in his freaking room, a room that just so happens to be located in a nice house in a nice neighborhood. In a town riddled with single parents, his folks somehow make it work in spite of Howard’s stressful job. None of this matters to him. Jamie is a self-centered addict. One day he is going to harvest his mother’s organs for the black market, just so he can placate his Dragonzord fix. Unbelievable.
Reflection: I think I’ve stumbled upon a trend in Schwarzenegger films: The shitty kid. There are exceptions – Edward Furlong in T2: Judgment Day and the unborn fetus from Junior – but I think Kindergarten Cop has enough crappy tots to balance that out. I must conduct more research.
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