Jingle All the Way
Short description
Howard Langston is a mattress salesman whose work keeps him away from his family, and after missing his son Jamie's karate demonstration he promises to make it up by getting the boy the season's most wanted toy, a Turbo Man action figure, for Christmas. The trouble is that it is Christmas Eve, and the toy is sold out everywhere. Howard sets out across the city to find one, competing with crowds of other parents chasing the same item, among them a postal worker named Myron Larabee who is just as determined to come home with the toy.
Brian Levant directed the film, which followed his work on Problem Child 2, Beethoven and The Flintstones, and came before The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas and later comedies. Arnold Schwarzenegger plays Howard, with Sinbad, Phil Hartman, Jake Lloyd, Rita Wilson and Robert Conrad also in the cast. Randy Kornfield wrote the screenplay, and Chris Columbus was among the producers.
Released in November 1996, the film had a budget of about 60 million dollars and took roughly 130 million dollars worldwide. On IMDb it holds 5.8 out of 10 from around 130,000 votes, while on TMDB it sits at 6.1 from a much smaller number of ratings. A critics' score of 4.4 out of 10 from 45 reviews places it below both audience measures.
What's left behind the scenes
- Sinbad made up a significant portion of his lines on the spot. Arnold Schwarzenegger also often improvised in dialogues with Sinbad's character.
- The plot is based on the fashion for Cabbage Patch dolls in the 1980s. A similar situation occurred before Christmas in 1996, when talking Elmo dolls (a character from "Sesame Street") were incredibly popular.
- In March 2001, a court in Birmingham, Michigan, ruled that 20th Century Fox had stolen the screenplay idea from Brian Wester, a biology teacher from Detroit. The film company was fined $19 million, although the amount was soon reduced to $1.5 million. Webster submitted a screenplay titled "Or Maybe It's Christmas?" to the film company in 1994, but received neither payment for it nor credit in the film's credits. The film company appealed, claiming that it had received Webster's screenplay only after it had obtained a brief overview of it, which was then reworked into the final screenplay, after which the verdict was revised.
- Arnold Schwarzenegger's agent suggested casting Sinbad in the role, but the producers believed he would be unconvincing as the villain, as he had long been associated with positive characters from family comedies. Sinbad himself claimed that his character would evoke sympathy rather than hatred from the audience. Moreover, he didn't even attend the audition with everyone else, as he was with politician Hillary Clinton and singer Sheryl Crow in Bosnia and Herzegovina, but Chris Columbus specifically waited for his return and organized new auditions, and the role was given to Sinbad, although he himself thought he had "blown" the audition.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
