Jingle All the Way 2 Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		2.5

Jingle All the Way 2 Blu-ray Movie Review

Even a 20 year old fruitcake would be fresher than this stale retread.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman December 10, 2014

There’s this little thing called the internet around nowadays, just in case some of you haven’t noticed. It has largely replaced many brick and mortar shops (for better or worse, as the case may be), making shopping a stay at home, point and click affair. Even the long “celebrated” Black Friday insanity has started giving way to the relatively calmer Cyber Monday, with more and more people choosing not to participate in mad dashes through big box department stores in favor for staying in their pajamas and shopping to the effulgent light emanating from their computer monitors. The intervening years between the affable if ultimately lightweight Jingle All the Way and its less affable if even more lightweight sequel Jingle All the Way 2 have made one of the central tenets of the “franchise” more untenable. Any “hard to find” gift is almost always readily available on that aforementioned internet, at least if one is willing to pay whatever the market will bear. If any major retailer’s website doesn’t have anything in stock, there are any number of online auction sites which will happily charge you a premium to secure whatever “unobtainable” toy has crept onto your child’s ever expanding list to Santa Claus. It’s no doubt unintentionally ironic that the original film attempted to skewer the rampant commercialism that has come to overtake the holiday season, while this straight to video sequel seems to be a prime example of a corporate entity—in the case the venerable WWE—attempting to cash in on a “brand” by offering a supposed “family entertainment” for the season. Unfortunately, Jingle All the Way 2 is the cinematic equivalent to a lump of coal.

There was a certain unlikability factor to several of the characters in Jingle All the Way, including the bratty kid who wanted a Turbo Man action figure. Unfortunately, that proclivity is probably only upped in this latest iteration. Larry the Cable Guy plays the appropriately named Larry, a good old boy struggling with the fact that he’s newly divorced and needing to share time with his slightly bratty daugther, Noel (Kennedi Clements). (Put aside any concerns like orthography, as Noel should clearly either be Noelle or Noël.) Noel is being shuttled between Larry and her mom Trish (Kristen Robek) and Trish’s new husband, Victor (Brian Stepanek). Victor is rather wealthy, smarmily so (of course), setting up a kind of class dialectic that wasn’t present in the original Jingle All the Way.

This “sequel” also slightly tweaks the formula of the original film. Here, Larry finds out (through a bit of subterfuge) that Noel really, really, really wants this year’s hot new toy, Harrison the Talking Bear. Victor also knows that fact, but instead of the fathers (albeit one of them a stepfather) dueling it out in a series of retail arenas, Victor uses his every skill to simply keep Larry from finding a bear at any given store. That makes a huge swath of this film play out in vignette fashion, with Larry repeatedly handed a “close, but no cigar” situation.

The film also spends way too much time on the supposedly bantering relationship between Larry and his best bud Claude (fellow WWE-er Santino Marella). In fact, Jingle All the Way 2 doesn’t even seem to know who its real villain is supposed to be. Is it the scheming Victor, or another supporting character named Welling (Eric Breker)? Interspersed with a lot of frankly stupid sight gags and equally lame supposed verbal “comedy” are little heart tugging tête-à-têtes between Larry and Noel.

Jingle All the Way 2 epitomizes a kind of lazy “filmmaking” that is typically more at home in things like Hallmark Channel holiday specials and the like. To be fair, even most Hallmark Channel undertakings offer more ambition and baseline competence than is in evidence here. It’s pretty difficult to think of anyone considering Jingle All the Way 2 as anything akin to this season’s hot new holiday Blu-ray.

Jingle All the Way 2 Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Jingle All the Way 2 is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. Shot digitally with the Arri Alexa, this is a competent but generally bland looking high definition presentation that would be perfectly at home on television on—well, niches like the Hallmark Channel. Colors are accurate looking but not especially robust, and clarity and sharpness are decent if not overwhelming. Some of the outdoor footage does have good depth of field and close-ups reveal good to excellent levels of fine detail. Contrast is generally strong and there are no issues with compression artifacts.

Jingle All the Way 2 Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Jingle All the Way 2's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix is, like the video quality, competent but never really amazing. Perhaps surprisingly, the film is not stuffed with wall to wall source cues, though there is still a glut of material playing underneath scenes, all of which is nicely situated throughout the surround channels. Dialogue is cleanly presented and even noisy sequences (of which there are many) offer good prioritization. Fidelity is excellent and there are no issues of any kind to warrant concern.

Jingle All the Way 2 Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Deleted Scenes (1080p; 7:01). Here's a thought: how about deleting the whole movie and putting it in this section?


• Christmas Catastrophes (1080p; 4:17) is not an unintentionally ironic title, unfortunately.


• Harrison the Bear TV Commercial (1080p; 1:06) is actually a montage of scenes from the film, but who's counting at this point?


• Santa Santino (1080p; 3:29) once again recycles scenes from the film, along with some brief interview snippets and an equally brief look at Santino as a wrestler.


• Christmas Wishes (1080p; 4:58) intersperses scenes from the film with cast and crew members talking about Christmas.


• Harrison the Bear: An Exclusive Interview (1080p; 2:45) once again spends most of its brief running time presenting scenes from the film.


• Reindeer Riding at Roosters Tavern (1080p; 3:47) is for those of you who didn't get enough of this kind of stuff in Urban Cowboy.


• Black Friday PSA (1080p; 3:07)

Jingle All the Way 2 Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Jingle All the Way 2 coasts by on the general amiability of Larry the Cable Guy and some admittedly cute charisma courtesy of little Kennedi Clements, but is this ever a sadly formulaic enterprise from the get go. Undemanding folks who simply want a little Christmas video wallpaper playing in the background while more important things are going on may find enough here (if only barely) to warrant a purchase, but with so many Christmas classics already available on Blu-ray, it's hard to think of this Blu-ray as much more than a decorative coaster for a holiday highball.