Jingle All the Way (1996) on Netflix
Mattress salesman Howard Langston missed his son Jamie's karate graduation, so he sets out to find the Turbo Man action figure Jamie wants. On Christmas Eve, every store is sold out.
- Netflix3.6/5
- IMDb5.8/10131,160 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes21%
Trailer
Plot summary
In Minneapolis, mattress salesman Howard Langston rarely finds time for his wife Liz or his nine-year-old son Jamie, and his neighbor Ted Maltin, who has feelings for Liz, often makes him look bad. After missing Jamie's karate class graduation, Howard tries to make it up to the boy with the Turbo Man action figure he wants for Christmas, a toy based on a television superhero. Liz had asked him to buy one two weeks earlier, and he forgot. By Christmas Eve, no store has a Turbo Man left, and a postal worker named Myron Larabee wants one for his own son too.
Cast
- Justin Chapmanas Billy
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Jingle All the Way (1996)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- In 1998, Murray Hill Publishing sued 20th Century Fox for $150,000, claiming the idea was stolen from Could This Be Christmas?, a screenplay it had purchased from high school teacher Brian Webster; the company said the script had 36 similarities with Jingle All the Way, including the plot, dialogue and character names.
- In 2001 Fox was found liable of copyright infringement and ordered to pay $19 million to Murray Hill, but Laurel died a few months after the verdict without receiving any of the money; damages were lowered to $1.5 million on appeal, and the verdict itself was quashed in 2004.
- Arnold Schwarzenegger became available in February 1996 after Fox's remake of Planet of the Apes was held up again; the film was his fourth appearance as the lead in a comedy, after Twins, Kindergarten Cop and Junior, and he was paid a reported $20 million for the role.
- Sinbad missed his audition because he was appearing with First Lady Hillary Clinton and musician Sheryl Crow on the USO tour of Bosnia and Herzegovina, but Columbus waited for him to return and, although Sinbad felt he had "messed" it up, he was given the part.
- Randy Kornfield wrote the film's original screenplay after witnessing his in-laws go to a Santa Monica toy store at dawn to get his son a Power Ranger, drawing on the real toy frenzies of the era such as the Cabbage Patch riots.
- Jingle All the Way is the third and final collaboration between Sinbad and Phil Hartman, after Coneheads and Houseguest, and the last film featuring Hartman to be released during his lifetime before he was murdered in 1998.
- The parade was filmed at Universal Studios Hollywood in California on the New York Street set due to safety concerns, shot from above by helicopters and stitched into matte shots of the real-life street; it took three weeks to film, with 1,500 extras and three custom-designed floats.
- Columbus initially wanted Joe Pesci to play Myron, but comedian Sinbad was chosen instead, partly due to his similar height and size to Schwarzenegger; the producers at first felt he was unsuited to a villain as it could harm his clean, family-oriented comedy act and reputation.
