Jingle All the Way 2, starring Larry the Cable Guy, is the worst-case scenario for a sequel/reboot/reinterpretation of a beloved IP. I hesitate to even link this film to the original—not only because no one involved with the first movie had anything to do with this abomination, but because the stories themselves have almost nothing in common. It feels like they had a generic, unappealing Christmas movie on their hands and retroactively decided to market it as a sequel to a recognizable IP.
I’m getting ahead of myself. The premise of Jingle All the Way 2 is as follows: Larry, played by Larry the Cable Guy, is a divorced dad who wants to get his daughter, Noel, a talking bear for Christmas. However, Noel’s stepdad, Victor, intends on stopping him. Sounds similar enough to the original, right? Wrong. All the stakes and tension that made the original work are completely absent here. Larry, unlike Howard, has a strong relationship with his child, and whether or not he gets the toy is largely irrelevant—Noel barely even cares about the talking bear. What made the original exciting was watching Howard scramble on Christmas Eve to secure the most popular toy on the market. In this sequel, there’s what feels like an entire week until Christmas, and the bears aren’t even hard to find. The only reason Larry struggles is because Victor hires a henchman to buy them all. It’s forced, manufactured drama that strips away any sense of urgency or believability. I’m not saying the film needed to mirror the original, but when it’s worse in every conceivable way, I struggle to justify its existence.
Larry the Cable Guy does a fine job with the material he’s given, but again, comparing this to the original highlights the problem. What made the first film so funny was that it was Arnold Schwarzenegger hunting for a toy—not just any adult man. On top of that, Arnold’s character was a lousy father, which made his suffering easy to laugh at. Larry, on the other hand, is just a well-meaning dad trying to do something nice, while being sabotaged by his daughter’s cartoonishly evil stepdad. It’s more sad than funny. Larry also lacks the inherent absurdity Arnold brought to the role—he’s not a massive bodybuilder with a thick Austrian accent—so that silly edge is completely gone. What we’re left with is a bland, and frankly boring, Christmas movie that exists solely to make a quick buck.
Fun fact: Jingle All the Way 2 is produced by WWE and features Santino Marella as Larry’s best friend, Claude.
At this point, I’m struggling to find anything else to say about this travesty. Everything that worked about the original Jingle All the Way is either missing or completely misunderstood here. Unlike the original, I look forward to never watching this film again—and hopefully, forgetting it ever existed.
Jingle All the Way 2, starring Larry the Cable Guy, is the worst-case scenario for a sequel/reboot/reinterpretation of a beloved IP. I hesitate to even link this film to the original—not only because no one involved with the first movie had anything to do with this abomination, but because the stories themselves have almost nothing in common. It feels like they had a generic, unappealing Christmas movie on their hands and retroactively decided to market it as a sequel to a recognizable IP.
I’m getting ahead of myself. The premise of Jingle All the Way 2 is as follows: Larry, played by Larry the Cable Guy, is a divorced dad who wants to get his daughter, Noel, a talking bear for Christmas. However, Noel’s stepdad, Victor, intends on stopping him. Sounds similar enough to the original, right? Wrong. All the stakes and tension that made the original work are completely absent here. Larry, unlike Howard, has a strong relationship with his child, and whether or not he gets the toy is largely irrelevant—Noel barely even cares about the talking bear. What made the original exciting was watching Howard scramble on Christmas Eve to secure the most popular toy on the market. In this sequel, there’s what feels like an entire week until Christmas, and the bears aren’t even hard to find. The only reason Larry struggles is because Victor hires a henchman to buy them all. It’s forced, manufactured drama that strips away any sense of urgency or believability. I’m not saying the film needed to mirror the original, but when it’s worse in every conceivable way, I struggle to justify its existence.
Larry the Cable Guy does a fine job with the material he’s given, but again, comparing this to the original highlights the problem. What made the first film so funny was that it was Arnold Schwarzenegger hunting for a toy—not just any adult man. On top of that, Arnold’s character was a lousy father, which made his suffering easy to laugh at. Larry, on the other hand, is just a well-meaning dad trying to do something nice, while being sabotaged by his daughter’s cartoonishly evil stepdad. It’s more sad than funny. Larry also lacks the inherent absurdity Arnold brought to the role—he’s not a massive bodybuilder with a thick Austrian accent—so that silly edge is completely gone. What we’re left with is a bland, and frankly boring, Christmas movie that exists solely to make a quick buck.
Fun fact: Jingle All the Way 2 is produced by WWE and features Santino Marella as Larry’s best friend, Claude.
At this point, I’m struggling to find anything else to say about this travesty. Everything that worked about the original Jingle All the Way is either missing or completely misunderstood here. Unlike the original, I look forward to never watching this film again—and hopefully, forgetting it ever existed.
