Phil Hartman Fans Thank ‘Jingle All the Way’ for Making Him A Chad Dad to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Blundering Beta
In the real world, Phil Hartman could never have nearly cuckolded Arnold Schwarzenegger — the late, great star was too good of a guy to ever embarrass that beta.
When comparing Chris Columbus’ filmography of family-focused Christmas comedies, the critically panned but mildly commercially successful 1996 movie Jingle All the Way doesn’t quite command the nostalgic adoration of, say, a Home Alone or a Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. But while Columbus only served as the producer and rewrote the script of Jingle All the Way, the film about competing fathers, Arnold Schwarzenegger and stand-up legend Sinbad, desperately (and violently) trying to secure the hottest toy on the market in time to appease their young sons before Christmas certainly has Columbus’ comedy DNA embedded within it.
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Case in point: Columbus’ decision to cast Saturday Night Live and The Simpsons star Hartman to play the nosy, divorced and charismatic neighbor spitting game at The Terminator’s wife throughout the entire runtime of Jingle All the Way was an inspired act of comedy genius that cemented the film as an all-time sleeper hit. When the Hartman-heads of Twitter celebrated what would have been the late comic genius’ 76th birthday last week, the fandom gave special thanks to Jingle All the Way for turning Hartman into the cheery, cheeky Chad that nearly cucked the man who went toe to toe with The Predator.
Though they didn’t get to trade punchlines in the film, Jingle All the Way marked the third collaboration between Hartman and Sinbad, following the reviled 1993 Saturday Night Live sketch-to-film adaptation Coneheads and the 1995 crime comedy Houseguest. Tragically, Jingle All the Way was also the last film starring Hartman to be released before he died, as the 1998 action-comedy Small Soldiers was released post-mortem and was dedicated to the late legend.
Also tragically, in 2014, 20th Century Fox decided to ruin the legacy of Jingle All the Way by putting out a straight-to-video sequel starring Larry the Cable Guy absent any of the original film’s creative team. It’s a shame that neither Hartman nor Schwarzenegger were around to tell America’s most straight-to-video stand-up to put the IP down — NOW.
