Jingle All the Way (1996) review

In an effort to make amends with his son Jamie (Jake Lloyd) for missing his karate demonstration (and several other events in his life), busy businessman Howard Langston (Arnold Schwarzenegger) becomes determined to buy him the much coveted Turbo Man action figure on Christmas Eve even though they're sold out everywhere across the Twin Cities, and then he finds himself in competition with postal worker Myron (Sinbad), who also wants the doll for his child.  As a strictly for-the-kiddos holiday movie, this represents a bygone era - before the rise of online shopping - where Black Friday shoppers used to actually line up at retail stores in droves (and sometimes got into physical altercations) for the year's "hottest items," so the scenario might seem a little bewildering, but it really did happen.  The concluding sequence at the parade is complete schmaltz and Sinbad's a rather mediocre "nemesis," although Phil Hartman is fun as the creepy neighborhood lech and I want to believe there used to be a Black Market in every major metropolis where "evil Santas" (like James Belushi) worked to build counterfeit toys ... because now it's just China.