KAMLOOPS – After several years, the MacPherson family have ruefully acknowledged that, at some point, they will feel compelled to watch Jingle All The Way as part of their annual holiday celebration.
“None of us wanted this. It just sort of happened gradually,” reported youngest daughter Sarah MacPherson, of the annual viewing of the critically-panned 1996 Arnold Schwarzenegger slapstick vehicle. According to her, the film was purchased on VHS as an afterthought during the 1997 Christmas season, before inexplicably entering heavy rotation in subsequent years.
“Oh god, has dad kept the old VHS player all these years just for this godawful movie,” mused a baffled Sarah, noticing that the tape was still in the player following the previous year’s viewing.
The dismaying mass realization occurred the day after the MacPhersons’ now-adult children had returned home for the holiday. When an innocent question over “what to do tonight” was answered by multiple suggestions of Jingle All The Way, the MacPhersons were forced to concede that they were willfully choosing to watch a movie where comedian Sinbad repeatedly hits Arnold Schwarzenegger in the testicles.
The movie, which depicts Schwarzenegger as a beleaguered father scrambling to locate a Turbo Man action figure for his son, has been viewed between 1 and 7 times in the MacPherson household every Christmas since its release. Witnesses also recalled how during last year’s begrudging viewing mother Sheila and oldest son Brad could both easily quote a shocking amount of the film’s poorly-written dialogue.
Despite family members rating the movie from “not funny” to “a pile of dogshit”, all have resigned themselves to the inevitable 2016 mass viewing of the movie. While efforts are currently underway to counter-plan a less depressing family activity, experts calculate the MacPhersons will experience Jingle by, at latest, December 26th.
Some MacPhersons expressed anxiety over viewing the film’s story, involving a middle class white man repeatedly brutalizing a black man in a mad dash for consumerism, through a 2016 “post-Ferguson” lens. Others expressed regret that attempts to introduce a “better family Christmas movie”, like It’s a Wonderful Life or Miracle On 34th Street, “just wouldn’t take”. Still, the MacPherson children agreed to dutifully watch the movie as a family “because mom loves it”, despite the fact that Sharon MacPherson loathes the film’s wooden jokes and wasted Phil Hartman subplot.
At press time, the MacPhersons’ brief joy at the ancient VHS tape breaking gave way to terror of their parents’ Netflix account recommending Jingle All The Way.
