Kate McGregor-Stewart | Through the Shattered Lens

Whatever else one may want to say about it, 1996’s Jingle All The Way is a cute film.

It’s necessary to point that out because Jingle All The Way has a terrible reputation and, if we’re going to be honest, it deserves a lot of the criticism that it has gotten over the years. In many ways, it epitomizes the way a Hollywood studio can take an interesting idea and then produce a film that seems to have no understanding of what made that idea so interesting in the first place. Arnold Schwarzenegger plays Howard Langston, an overworked mattress store manager who waits until Christmas Eve to try to buy his son a Turbo Man action figure. (In the film, they call it a “doll,” which is one of the film’s false moments.) The only problem is that the Turbo Man action figure is the most popular gift of the year and everyone is looking for one. What starts out at as a satire of commercialism ultimately becomes a celebration of the same thing as Howard ends up dressed up as Turbo Man and taking part in his town’s Christmas parade. The film becomes a comedy without any sharp edges.

That said, it’s a cute film. It’s not cute enough to really be good but it is cute enough that it won’t leave you filled with rage. Arnold Schwarzenegger is in True Lies mode here, playing a seemingly boring and suburban guy who is secretly a badass. (In True Lies, Schwarzenegger was secretly a spy who had killed man people, though all of them were bad. In Jingle All The Way, he’s just a parent who has waited too long to go Christmas shopping.) Schwarzenegger’s main strength as an action star — even beyond his physique — was that he always seemed to have a genuine sense of humor and he’s the best thing about Jingle All The Way. This film finds him acting opposite actual comedic actors like Jim Belushi and Phil Hartman and holding his own. (The film also features Sinbad as another dad trying to get the Turbo Man action figure but Sinbad comes across as being more of a stand-up comedian doing bits from his routine than an actual character.) The film’s set pieces grow increasingly bizarre and surreal as Howard searches for his Turbo Man and the film actually becomes less effective the stranger that it gets. A scene of Howard fighting a crowd in a toy store works far better than a later scene where Howard battles a bunch of men dressed as Santa Claus and his elves. (It doesn’t help that, after an intelligent and well-edited opening thirty minutes, the film seems to lose all concept of comedic timing.) But there’s a sincerity to Schwarzenegger’s performance that keeps you watching.

Of course, today, Jingle All The Way feels like a relic from a different age. All the kids want a Turbo Man and you’re so busy at work that the stores are closed by the time you get home? Fine. Hop on Amazon at three in the morning and order one. Christmas shopping is a lot easier nowadays.

It’s just not as much fun.

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Wednesdays, I will be reviewing Monsters, which aired in syndication from 1988 to 1991. The entire series is streaming on YouTube.

Mister Who?

Episode 2.15 “Mr. Swlabr”

(Dir by Warner Shook, originally aired on January 28th, 1990)

11 year-old Roy Barton (Robert Oliveri) spends all of his time in the basement of his house, playing with his train set and making dinosaur figurines. His mother (Kate McGregor-Stewart) is abusive. His older sister (Danielle Ferland) is spoiled and self-centered. Roy doesn’t have a friend in the world and has never gotten over his father abandoning the family when he was younger.

One day, Roy opens a box of cereal and finds a small dinosaur toy. Roy puts the toy in water and it comes to life. Mr. Swlabr (voiced by New York performance artist Rockets Redglare) says that he’ll be Roy’s friend and promises that he’ll never leave. Awwwww! Roy’s evil mother tries to drown Mr. Swlabr with a hose but the water just causes Mr. Swlabr to grow into an even bigger dinosaur. Mr. Swlabar spits a bunch of green goo on Roy’s sister. It doesn’t hurt her but it does convince her and her mother to do whatever Roy tells them to do.

This was an odd episode. It played out like a particularly macabre fairy tale, with Roy finally getting a friend who was big enough to bully everyone who was previously bullying him. It had its moments. I teared up a bit when Roy begged Mr. Swlabr not to abandon him the way that his father did. But, in the end, the hand puppet dinosaur was a bit too silly to be an effective monster.

Probably the most interesting thing about this episode was the casting of Rockets Redglare as the voice of Mr. Swlabr. From the 1970s up until his death in 2001, Rockets Redglare was a fixture of the New York underground. He was a comedian, a performance artist, and eventually a character actor. He worked as a drug counselor while, at the same time, delivering drugs to people like Jean-Michel Basquiat and Sid Viscous. He was reportedly the last known person to have seen Sid and his girlfriend Nancy Spungen alive and he was a suspect when Nancy was later found dead. According to Phil Strongman’s Pretty Vacant: A History of Punk, Redglare later told his friends that he was the one who had murdered Nancy. That said, musician Howie Pyro later said that Redglare was notorious for making up stories to get attention. (For their part, the police focused their investigation on Sid Viscous, who they claimed confessed despite the fact that Viscous was also too drugged out to really remember much of anything. The main lesson here: Stay away from the heroin.) Redglare went on to become a bit of an underground celebrity, appearing in movies directed by Jim Jarmusch, Stee Buscemi, and Olive Stone. (He played himself in Julian Schnabel’s Basquiat). Redglare died at the age of 52, saying in his final interview that everything he did, he “did to excess.” RIP, Mr. Swlabr.