Jingle All the Way (1996)

Directed by Brian Levant. Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sinbad, Rita Wilson, Phil Hartman, Jake Lloyd, Robert Conrad, Martin Mull, Jim Belushi, Danny Woodburn. [PG]

Bummed about letting down his son (Lloyd) yet again, neglectful father Schwarzenegger is bound and determined to get the kid a Turbo Man action figure for Christmas. With it being the hottest toy of the season and Christmas closing in fast, he’s left to scurry around town in a mad dash trying to find one, a race that turns competitive when he picks up a rival bad-dad (Sinbad) searching for the same toy. What Stop or My Mom Will Shoot is to Stallone, this Christmas crud is to Schwar—okay, that’s a slight exaggeration (Schwarzenaggeration?), but it’s frenetic and desperate and juvenile in the absence of tight farcical plotting and comic invention. Ah-nuld punches a reindeer, fights off a gang of crooked Santas, gets his hands on a parade jet-pack that would make the U.S. military drool, and tells Phil Hartman to “put that cookie down!” in between the movie’s rampant materialist message and sidebar insults to postal carriers. Unless you’re a child easily amused by lights, shapes and noise, this turd-shaped jingling bell smells worse than Batman. And did George Lucas not watch this movie before casting The Phantom Menace and realize Jake Lloyd couldn’t act? Spawned a straight-to-video sequel in 2014 starring Larry the Cable Guy.

27/100