Listen to our Jingle All The Way episode on:
OK, so we cheated a little this week. Technically, Jingle All The Way – a 1996 vehicle for the questionable comedic talents of Arnold Schwarzenegger – does have an official sequel. Released straight to DVD in 2014, Jingle All The Way 2 featured none of the original cast or creative team and replaced Schwarzenegger with blue-collar standup star Larry The Cable Guy. We’ve never seen it, and by all accounts, neither should you.
We have seen the original movie though, after it was recommended to us by our very special guests on this week’s episode, Paul Goodman and Paul Salt from the hilarious One Good Thing podcast. They help us to unpick the many curious issues with the film – from the crassly commercial central message that paternal love can be substituted by a high-priced action toy, to the jarring tonal shifts made even more uncomfortable by Schwarzenegger’s complete lack of comic energy or chemistry with his co-stars.
There’s also the inevitable drinking games, which include shots for unquestioned criminal activity and wanton destruction of property, references to Phil Hartman’s apparently boundless sexual magnetism and full-blown chugging every time motor-mouthed co-star Sinbad launches into a monologue that’s more disturbing and exhausting than funny.
In a minor tweak to our usual format, the sequel portion of this week’s episode takes the form of a ‘pod off’. Instead of coming up with ideas individually, we collaborated on a single concept and encouraged our guest stars to do the same. Does their dramatic 21st century tale of a grieving family’s violent quest for the latest Turbo Man model beat our gritty remake that casts Chris ‘The Rock’ Johnson as a modern-day Schwarzenegger on a desperate Yuletide dash through the toy stores of New York in search of a missing batch of class-A heroin? As ever, we leave the answer in the hands of our listeners…
Our Jingle All The Way episode is available for free download and streaming from all major Podcasting platforms, including iTunes, Stitcher, aCast and Podbean – see the links at the top of this blog post. If you enjoy the show, hit subscribe to receive a brand new episode every Friday morning. Listener reviews really help us to expand our audience, so if you want to leave us an extra-special Christmas gift, please consider throwing a few kind words and stars our way on iTunes or Stitcher.
We love hearing from our listeners, so whether you have some feedback on the show, suggestions for movies you’d like to hear us cover in the future, or your own sequel ideas you’d like us to read out on the air, you can contact us via Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, Google+ or by leaving a comment under this blog post. Next week we’ll be wrapping up 2017 with an extra special year-end review (and sequel-bonanza) before diving back in with some absolute classics from January 2018. We hope you’ll continue to join us…