Review of Jingle All the Way

A formulaic holiday film for the family, Jingle All the Way is a waste of Sinbad's and Phil Hartman's talents, though may be the best we could hope for from Arnold Schwarzenegger. We follow Howard Langston (Schwarzeneggar), the too-busy-to-be-a-good-father we always see in holiday movies, who has one job during for Christmas: get the Turbo Man Doll his son demands. His wife, Liz (Rita Wilson), asked Howard to take care of this task weeks before the movie begins, but did he do it? Noooooo, of course not. So now we enter the holiday hunting season, and just to make it even more desperate for Howard, it's Christmas Eve!!! We follow Howard from toy store to toy store, trying to find this doll in an effort to keep his son happy and prevent him from becoming some bitter, evil adult. The son, by the way, is played by Jake Lloyd, who a few years later would play Annikan Skywalker in Episode I of the Star Wars saga, so I guess he does become a bitter, evil adult in the name of Darth Vader. Perhaps this movie's power reaches even that galaxy far, far away. Anyway, each toy store Howard goes to, Sinbad's mailman character shows up there too, and a rivalry of sorts begins, where they are both enemies in the search for the toy and contemporaries as fathers just trying to make it a good holiday for their kids. Sinbad, who I find very funny, is given very little to work with here, and he plays such a cartoon character, it is hard to take him seriously. The late Phil Hartman plays Howard's next door neighbor, Ted, who helps Howard's wife get ready for the holidays in an effort to get his own Christmas gift. This silly subplot went nowhere, and was just a waste of having Phil Hartman in the movie. Jingle All The Way is sort of entertaining for kids, though there is a potentially disturbing scene involving a gang of Santas who run afoul of the law. Adults will just roll their eyes and wish they were watching Chevy Chase spend his Christmas Vacation.