5. Jingle All The Way (1996)
Many consider Jingle All the Way one of the best Christmas movies ever made. The festive comedy combines the talents of many ’90s stars, including Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sinbad, Rita Wilson, Phil Hartman, Jake Lloyd, and Jim Belushi. However, despite a premise involving a father attempting to buy a hot-selling toy for his son, it’s yet another of those Christmas movies that just isn’t suitable for kids.
Clearly written as a means of satirizing the rampant commercialism of Christmas, Jingle All the Way doesn’t really tell the most child-friendly narrative. It simply follows a neglectful father as he attempts to buy his son’s love after failing to do the single thing his wife asked him to do for his family. It sets a dangerously low bar for children, and tells a story that they simply wouldn’t be interested in hearing.
As well as teaching kids all about how hard Christmas shopping is for their parents, Jingle All the Way features the repeated unwanted sexual advances of a predatory neighbor, a scene involving multiple mall Santas attempting to evade the police, a grown man punching a reindeer hard enough to knock it unconscious, a child climbing out over a clearly fatal drop, and multiple instances of violence towards people with dwarfism. It’s a fun Christmas movie, but not really family-friendly (despite its toy-based premise).