"The holiday season means holiday movies: films that can be counted upon to bring warmth and holiday cheer and also probably some snow, a little bit of magic, and grumpy, greedy, workaholic protagonists who need to be reminded of the true meaning of Christmas. Good holiday movies can be great, but bad holiday movies? They can be fun in their own way. Maybe they serve up tired cliches or schmaltzy sentiment. Or maybe if it's Love Actually, they just do Emma Thompson really dirty."
"When you break it down, what makes a Christmas movie bad? I don't think you can come up with a better metric than purports to satirize or comment upon commercialism while being 100% steeped in it, and refusing to undermine it in any way. The plot of Jingle All The Way can be summed up in five words: Man wants toy for science. Arnold Schwarzenegger is your star, and Sinbad is his kind-of sort-of rival."
Holiday films typically aim to deliver warmth, snow, magic, and a cynical protagonist who must learn the true meaning of Christmas. Bad holiday movies can be enjoyable for their clichés, schmaltz, or mean-spirited turns. Jingle All The Way satirizes commercialism while remaining fully immersed in it, centering on a simplified plot summarized as "Man wants toy for science." The film stretches sketch material into a bloated 90-minute comedy, yields few laughs from performers like Phil Hartman, and offers minimal lesson-learning, with a child character as the sole source of perspective. A 2014 sequel exists without the original cast.
Read at www.npr.org
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