‘Twas the season for excessive consumption, and Liam and Alex indulged in one of the more confusing Christmas features of their childhood: Jingle All the Way.
It’s a ’90s festive classic, but perhaps not in the way it intended to be. Liam and Alex re-watched it, re-thought it and relayed what the hell they were trying to achieve. Spoiler alert: they don’t reach any solid conclusions.
Liam: This is the most anti-Christmas Christmas movie I have ever seen. The main message is that crazy Christmas commerce makes assholes out of everyone.
Alex: Let’s go from the start. Turboman is the toy of the decade, apparently. I’m not sure why.
What does the toy do?
It has 5 catchphrases which, for 1996, was pretty good I guess.
But it doesn’t even have karate chop action. Even the Margaret Thatcher doll has karate chop action.
Seems like a piece of crap. But the whole world is going absolutely apeshit for it – especially our little Timmy boy.
Is his name Timmy?
It’s Jamie.
Okay. So Jimmy wants this toy because everyone else is going to get it for Christmas.
His Dad is the worst Dad in the world. Missing karate, missing everything. He spends all of his time on the phone in his office saying “you’re my favourite customer”. Which is the first of many times that this movie has used almost exactly the same lines of dialogue and delivery from The Room.
He tries to make Timmy’s karate recital, willingly breaking the law to do it, which says to me “dedicated father” but his kid still goes off in a sulk.
I feel like they didn’t run the lines with Arnie at all slash, did he even have a script? When the police officer pulls him over he’s like,
He gets home and guess what scumbag is hanging on his roof putting Christmas lights up?
The Ted.
Arnie then goes up into Timmy’s room to apologise. He comes into his room and because he can’t act, he starts kickboxing around trying to be playful…
…but it’s actually pretty terrifying.
So this deeply neglected child decides “well the one way he can make all this up to me is through material possessions – get me this action figure”
Then Arnie is like “I am a bad father; how can I redeem these years of neglect?” The answer is Turboman. Plastic doll. Will do it all. So he promises to get him one and then there’s a massive switcheroo, Timmy hugs him and they start drawing together. Kids are quite dumb, it seems.
Wish I could be that acceptably idiotic again.
Arnie is stoked and is like…
And then we have the first of many extreme dolly zooms on Arnie’s face.
The wife actually had to duck for the camera to get over there.
I also wrote down a line of dialogue here verbatim: when he’s trying to convince his wife that he has already bought the doll, this is what he says…
“You thought for a moment that I would not do something that you tell me?”
It’s not English; it’s nothing.
It was probably his 15th take.
Arnie then heads out to get Turboman and bumps into scumbag Ted who obviously bought his doll months ago. This is where we get line #2 from The Room.
Arnie then goes to the one store where he first meets Sinbad.
The black disenfranchised postman.
Which, according to him, is the worst job in the world and is actually the leading cause of suicide. Again, great thing to bring up in a kids Christmas movie.
If there’s one thing kids like at Christmas time, it’s learning that people sometimes kill themselves.
There’s a massive showdown in the store because there are (shock horror) no Turbomans left.
It’s the funniest thing the employees and the whole store have ever heard.
They all turn around and laugh raucously at these two idiots.
Also weird how everyone else in the store is there on Christmas Eve as well but still down to have a good ol’ laugh at Arnie and Sinbad for being disorganised.
So Sinbad and Arnie have a weird race through the store to get the last Turboman somewhere.
Where Sinbad becomes a total asshole and knocks Arnie over.
Arnie trips Sinbad up with a motorised car leaving his twitching corpse. But not before leaning over him and saying “poor baby.”
Never mind the fact that Arnie could have ended him with one punch.
Arnie calls home and guess who is home with the Wife? Gross Ted with another cookie innuendo.
And we see Arnie screaming into the phone…
Arnie and Sinbad become friends again, right before a stranger yells…
One plot convenience of many.
Who are these messenger guys that run around the city yelling about Turboman? I guess that’s just what people did before twitter, they just yelled on the street.
Anyway, they get to the next department store and there’s some weird lottery system to choose who gets the last doll through coloured bouncy balls.
The bounciest balls in the history of the universe, which look like more fun than the Turboman doll.
So the final ball bounces into the hand of an unsuspecting child, who seems way too old to be riding in a pram.
And Arnie proceeds to pursue that child into a ball pit and choke it.
Before being chased away by concerned citizens. So now he’s already got speeding and child abuse in his repertoire.
Then this dodgy Santa and dodgy dwarf cart him off to get him a Turboman from some shady industrial warehouse where they knock on the door and have a sweet jibe at Arnie in the password.
Arnie rolls his eyes surprisingly well at this.
His eyes are his best acting asset.
Was this factory a front for something?
They were selling dodgy black market Turboman dolls.
Seemingly they only had one Spanish Turboman doll. That falls to pieces instantly so obviously Arnie is furious. So they all try and antagonise him but Arnie refuses to hit a Santa.
Then we get the next The Room moment when the whole factory floor of Santas turn around and go…
This aggravates Arnie to hit not just one, but several Santas.
He starts by stretching one of their beards, which makes him do a full somersault and defy the rules of physics.
Talking of physics, how crazy tall was that giant Santa that struts out?
I don’t know what Hobbit style camera tricks they must have done to make Arnie look small, but they did it very well.
The way the camera is set, it makes the guy look about 3ft taller than Arnie. Which would make him like 10ft tall.
But they had absolutely no trouble getting in a small guy to make Arnie look huge – cue Verne Troyer. Tiny little baby Verne Troyer.
Oh my god, sorry! He’s not a baby, that’s terrible.
They like to be called midgets.
Little baby midgets? Is that right?
No, but congrats to him for getting promoted from elf to Santa; god knows how he swung that. He would have awfully weak knees with all those regular sized children sitting on him.
Don’t say “regular size”!
I mean… all those normal chil– heavy children.
So Mini-me gets punched into a wall and the police finally show up.
While the Santas dog pile on Arnie. So they arrest as many people as possible. But they can’t arrest the small fellow…
Small fellow!
…because he hides under a table and nobody can see him.
Also, it’s illegal to arrest babies.
Now we get felony #3 where, instead of explaining the situation, Arnie impersonates a police officer.
Very cool move on his part, very poorly executed. He just kind of goes…
What would have been better…
We cut back to the suburbs and Scumbag Ted is serving all the wives hot chocolate.
Ted’s son is also showing off his pet reindeer which, by the way, he named after his Dad.
So when Arnie calls Timmy he’s like…
And Arnie goes…
They could have gone further with the innuendo I thought, like “she’s busy riding Ted” or “she’s stroking Ted’s massive horn”.
Would love to see you rewrite it.
So Jamie has another wah-wah over the phone and Arnie goes to where every single sad person goes…
The diner.
Where he finds suicidal Sinbad, who reminds us again that Christmas is their one chance a year to undo all their screw-ups.
I mean, it’s not. Every day is a chance to undo your screw-ups. The emphasis that these two men have placed in the importance of Christmas presents to redeem their poor parenting is very scary.
Not to mention they’re swigging whiskey at the time.
Something heavily flagged in the “Parent’s Guide” on IMDB, I might add.
Sinbad tells this weird sob-story that was something like…
In conclusion, buying a toy for your child is literally the biggest act of love you could ever show.
That will somehow set them up for life and bring them many financial successes.
Otherwise they will resent you for the rest of their lives and become a postman.
Then there’s the weirdest bit of the whole movie where Arnie envisages Sinbad morphing into little Timmy drinking whiskey and dressed in a tiny postie outfit.
So now he has to get a Turboman doll to save Timmy from rabid alcoholism. Seems like a lot of pressure mounting on this piece of plastic.
A DJ on the radio then announces that they’re giving away a Turboman doll to anyone who can name all of Santa’s reindeer.
So they race to the radio station, which is conveniently just ’round the corner.
Arnie beats the postie to the radio station but then Sinbad says…
Another ‘90s kids film making light of terrorism.
But it turns out the bomb is a trinket box and the prize is a Turboman voucher. Who wants a goddamn voucher?
The police storm in and what does Sinbad pull out?
Seems like Sinbad is definitely not going to be returning to the postie-force.
All the policemen put their weapons down after Arnie confirms “Yes, that man is a terrorist”. This makes Arnie a cohort to this faux terrorist act. Felony number four.
Arnie and Sinbad leave, and in a dark turn, the bomb is real and goes off. But it’s okay because it’s a Looney Tunes bomb.
Arnie goes back home and thinks it’s a good idea to steal Ted’s Turboman from under his tree.
But then he feels bad and goes…
With the exact enunciation of Tommy Wiseau.
Ted the reindeer then chases Arnie down in Ted the human’s house, where he knocks the head of St. Joseph into a fire and kicks it out the window.
Which is more evidence that this movie really hates Christmas – a symbolic hate crime.
Arnie then punches the reindeer.
And spikes its water bowl.
He then runs to the Christmas parade because again, he made a promise to Timmy that he might not be able to fulfil.
And while this is happening, we get that very uncomfortable bit in the car with the wife and Ted, where he finally tries it on for real with her.
This scene is flagged again on the IMDB “Parent’s Guide”, that says something like “The Bachelor neighbour attempts to lure her in emotionally inside the car. 4/10”. Very weird to have a rating system, like is it for effectiveness?
Two out of five moral smiley faces.
The wife gets creeped out and bashes him over the head with the eggnog thermos. That’s what you get for referring to yourself in the third person like that.
Meanwhile, Arnie bowls over the same poor old policeman, pouring hot coffee all over his face.
Granted, that same officer did just survive an explosion, so piping hot caffeine is nothing to his granite face.
Arnie then stumbles upon the warehouse with the parade set-up.
And the guy that was supposed to play Turboman is late. So guess who has wandered in and is next in line for the Turboman throne? Arnie. I don’t know who these guys were before him but they must have been huge.
So Arnie is in the parade as Turboman. It’s amazing. Everyone’s dreams are coming true.
Until Sinbad uses tinsel to fibre-wire the guy who was supposed to play Turboman’s arch villain.
Such a showman. If Sinbad really want to take Arnie out he could have just thrown one of his many postman bombs at him. I appreciate that commitment to pageantry.
The announcer then says that Arnie’s Turboman would give one lucky child in the crowd a Turboman doll.
But it’s totally rigged because Arnie picks his own kid.
He cruises past ignoring all these homeless kids, kids in wheelchairs…
…kids who have just gone through recent divorces…
…kids from the local hospital on gurneys…
Sinbad then comes out in full regalia and chases Jamie, who is forced to run away from a grown man screaming for a doll.
Meanwhile, Turboman fights anonymous henchman that pop out of nowhere.
Yeah, using seemingly real Turboman weapons. Seems weird they would make the costume that elaborate.
And Sinbad chases the kid along a rooftop and up a giant metal bar Christmas tree.
Meanwhile, the local police are watching and applauding the great avant-garde interactive show.
I think most of the police force are still in shock after surviving a terrorist bombing.
And a deadly hot coffee attack.
The tree falls over and now hanging off the edge are Sinbad and Jamie. Instead of Arnie maybe going under where his small helpless son might fall, he decides to bring out a boomerang and place all his trust in it being an actual functioning weapon.
And thankfully, it is an actual boomerang. So it comes back in a perfect straight line hitting Sinbad, who falls onto a fortunately-placed float.
Timmy falls too, and Arnie tries to use the jetpack to save him.
The ultimate jetpack fail.
Failing for about 10 whole minutes because they needed to spend the CGI budget.
But he still saves him, and his kid still hasn’t figured out the Turboman is his dad. Even though all that’s covering his face is a thin yellow pair of Anastasia style glasses.
Not to mention his very distinctive Austrian accent.
And then we have the big reveal.
So, he’s the ultimate hero really. For whatever reason. And Jamie realises that he doesn’t need the Turboman doll because he’s got the real Turboman at home.
We see Sinbad being taken away by the cops and Jamie is like…
So what’s the message here?
Christmas is a horrible, horrible thing.
And you can redeem yourself as a father by getting drunk and dressing up as a superhero. AKA: attending the sevens.
