Rating:

Here, finally, is a film for everyone who saw Kindergarten Cop and thought to themselves “Wow, that Arnold Schwarzenegger sure is a great actor—I want him to be in ALL my family films!”

For this film we have a story about a young boy who feels neglected all year round by his business-obsessed, yet physically commanding, father. And wouldn’t you know it? All his bad parenting seems to come to a head at Christmas, when his son just wants one thing: a Turboman action figure.

And dad is reminded constantly of his poor performance as a father by a slew of supporting characters that are so flat and annoyingly repetitive, it even makes you hate Phil Hartman, who plays a model parent and social butterfly—the next door neighbor of Arnold’s family, with his crafty eye on Arnold’s nagging wife.

So the only real emotion we feel during the entire film is pity for our leading character, who doesn’t seem to be getting a fair deal by his single-minded family and nosy neighbor. Also, his son is Anakin Skywalker, and let’s be honest: you’d neglect that kid, too.

The actual events of the movie are just one set piece after another. There are fist fights in shopping malls, a ring of corrupt Santas selling pirated goods, a crazy bomb-toting mailman, a rampaging reindeer, and a jet-pack ride to save his son. None of the sequences seem to flow naturally from the last, and that, more than anything else, is what makes a movie boring.

This is the one rule of filmmaking that Hollywood is constantly forgetting to follow: it doesn’t matter how many jokes you make, how many jet pack battles you have, or how many giant robots who learned their personalities from the internet there are… if one scene doesn’t flow believably and naturally from another, no one buys it, and you get bored.

But! I will say that the message of the film is a heartwarming one. As Arnold puts all his efforts into fulfilling the material desires of his son, but fails to spend Christmas Eve with his family, the snake in the grass next door does the opposite: he encroaches on the family, winning their hearts and minds with the simpler things in life. Hot chocolate, Christmas carolers, the annual parade downtown—all things that Arnold could have, and should have, done with his wife and son instead of traipsing all over town looking for a doll.

Arnold puts it best when he mangles the line, “A few years ago, I wanted to do something really special for Jamie, so I built him his own clubhouse… you should’ve seen his face light up. …He played in that clubhouse the entire day. He even made us have Christmas dinner in it. I was the hero then.”

And we’d all be heroes if we spent time with our families instead of watching Arnold Schwarzenegger movies. Except for Terminator II.

But even having an apparently useful meaning doesn’t save you from feeling like you’ve just wasted two hours of your life that you can never, ever get back from this film.

If You Hated This, You Will Also Totally Hate:

• The Santa Clause
• A Christmas Story
• The Santa Clause 2
• National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation
• The Year Without a Santa Claus