Jingle All the Way Got a 20% From Critics. It's Better Than You Think
Arnold Schwarzenegger's 1996 toy-store war was mocked as a cash grab. Thirty years later it's the most honest Christmas movie Hollywood ever made by accident.
By the Heckle Desk · · 2 min read
Jingle All the Way came out on Nov. 22, 1996, after a world premiere at the Mall of America, which is a little like holding a funeral at the cemetery. Critics had at it. It sits at 20% on Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic gave it a 34, and the director, Brian Levant, was nominated for a Razzie. I want to argue that every one of those people was looking at the wrong thing, and I want to do it before Thanksgiving, while you still have time to change your mind.
The story is simple enough that a toddler could pitch it. Arnold Schwarzenegger plays Howard Langston, a Minneapolis dad who has forgotten to buy his son the year's hot toy, Turbo Man, and has one Christmas Eve to fix it. Sinbad plays Myron, a mailman with the same problem and much less to lose. The two of them chase a doll across the city like it owes them money. Phil Hartman is the smarmy neighbor, which is the only kind of neighbor Phil Hartman was ever allowed to be.
Here's my case. The critics in 1996 saw a cynical toy commercial with Arnold in it. What they were actually watching was a documentary that hadn't happened yet. The script was rewritten by Chris Columbus to satirize Christmas commercialism, and it drew on the Cabbage Patch and Power Rangers riots of the years before. That same season, grown adults were fighting in the aisles over Tickle Me Elmo. Every November since, the news has run footage of somebody tackling a stranger over a television at a big-box store. The movie wasn't exaggerating. It was taking notes.
And Schwarzenegger is funnier in it than anyone gave him credit for. He was the biggest action star in the world, and he spent 89 minutes being humiliated by a mall Santa, a reindeer and a crowd of mothers. A movie star who'll play the fool is rarer than a movie star who can act, and worth more. Sinbad holds his own, too; he won a Blockbuster Entertainment Award for it, which in 1996 was the only award decided by people who'd actually rented the thing.
The audiences knew. CinemaScore had it at a B-plus. It made about $129.8 million worldwide, on a budget reported at $60 million to $75 million, so nobody went broke. It plays every December, and Slashfilm reported it climbing Prime Video's most-watched charts during the holidays. Even the sequel tells you something. Jingle All the Way 2 went straight to DVD in 2014 with Larry the Cable Guy and none of the original cast, which is exactly the kind of cheap knockoff Howard Langston would have ended up buying at a gas station at 11:58 p.m.
Is it a great film? No. It's loud, the climax is a man in a rocket suit, and the tone wobbles like a shopping cart with one bad wheel. But it's honest about the one thing every other Christmas movie lies about, which is that the holiday mostly consists of tired parents doing violence in parking lots for the love of a child who will forget the toy by February. Critics hated it because it was true. That's usually how you can tell.