Entertainment
Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Perfect Holiday Movie Is Now Free To Stream
By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
A good Christmas movie is a bit like the holiday itself: a fun and fulfilling way of bringing the entire family together. One of the most overlooked films in the crowded holiday season is Jingle All the Way (1996), a movie that allows action legend Arnold Schwarzenegger to showcase his surprisingly hilarious skills as a comic actor.
Jingle All the Way is now free to stream on Tubi, allowing those wanting to get into the holiday spirit (or just those wanting a few really good laughs) to experience a crazy Christmas caper with just the press of a button.
In the Jingle Jangle Morning
The premise of Jingle All the Way is that a workaholic dad hasn’t been able to spend enough time with his son as he would like. He decides to win the kiddo over by getting him the Christmas present of his dreams: a Turbo Man action figure. But he waited until the last minute, meaning that he must spend all of Christmas Eve competing with a rival dad to bring home the hottest new toy of the season.
The cast of Jingle All the Way includes Phil Hartman (best known for the NewsRadio television series) as a divorced dad who has the hots for our hardworking mattress salesman’s wife. That salesman is played by Arnold Schwarzenegger (best known for Terminator 2: Judgement Day) a man on a mission to find this year’s hottest toy to get back into his son’s good graces. To do that, he’ll have to succeed against a rival dad played by Sinbad (best known outside this movie for Coneheads), a man out to prove that the Highlander rules apply to holiday shopping: there can be only one!
A Turbo Action Hit
While critics didn’t exactly love the film (more on this soon), Jingle All the Way was a modest box office hit, earning $129.8 million against a budget of $75 million. It actually earned back its budget in only 10 days, a success that most modern comedy directors would kill to achieve. Over 18 years after the original film jingled its way into the box office, we got an unlikely sequel (Jingle All the Way 2) starring Santino Marella and, inexplicably enough, Larry the Cable Guy.
When Jingle All the Way premiered, critics collectively decided to go full Grinch on this Christmas movie. On Rotten Tomatoes, the movie has a rating of 20 percent, with critics deriding the film for an uneven tone that alternated between satire and slapstick. They did praise Arnold Schwarzenegger for giving it his best, acknowledging that most of the film’s best punchlines come courtesy of the action star’s surprisingly versatile comedy chops.
A Christmas Cult Classic For a Reason
Why, then, am I recommending that you watch a Christmas comedy that the critics so thoroughly dragged for filth? For one thing, this movie makes the most of its odd couple premise. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sinbad couldn’t be more different, and their unique comedic styles perfectly animate the different personalities that make their characters such perfect foils for one another.
Schwarzenegger himself is a comedy revelation in Jingle All the Way, and his inevitably off-kilter line deliveries often turn mundane lines of dialogue into memorable messes. The actor doesn’t exactly do subtle, and his humor in this movie is as impressively expansive as the man’s personality. In short, this is a great holiday movie to stream for anyone who thinks Schwarzenegger isn’t a genuinely funny performer capable of stealing every scene.
Finally, the holidays are right around the corner, and it’s always hard to find something the whole family can watch together. Why not put on an underrated ‘90s classic to show the fam an oddly wholesome classic with a compelling (if incomplete) warning against crass commercialism? There’s a reason this film has become a cult hit in the last decade, and its uniquely weird little charms are only a click away.
Will you agree that Jingle All the Way is an underrated Christmas classic, or would you rather trade this quirky comedy for a Turbo Man action figure? The only way to find out is to stream it for free (a price that leaves you plenty of cash for last-minute holiday shopping) on Tubi. Afterward, you may never look at action legend Arnold Schwarzenegger the same way ever again!
