10 Terrible Movies That Were Absolutely Bursting With Cliches

6. Jingle all the Way (1996) Speaking of "toyetic" Schwarzenegger movies from the mid 90's, why not Jingle all the Way? Since it's a Christmas movie, the cliches should almost spell themselves out, but let's take a closer look: Like most "good" Christmas movies, Jingle all the Way is a essentially a reworking of the Scrooge story: A heartless businessman, through a series of events, comes to understand the true meaning of Christmas. In this instance, the meaning of Christmas is that a parent can make up for years of emotional neglect by buying the right toy. And for anyone wondering, they did in fact make actual Turbo-Man dolls. Why wouldn't they? In 1995, the major success of Toy Story truly opened the flood-gates for movies about fictional toys that served the dual purpose of acting as a 90-minute commercial for a real-life product. As a true child of the 90's, I had everything from a Buzz Lightyear to a small collection of toys from 1998's Small Soldiers. Schwarzenegger's Howard Langston is disingenuous and business-minded. If you made him a lawyer instead of a mattress salesman, you'd have Jim Carrey in Liar, Liar. Come to think of it, if you switch Christmas for a birthday and switch the climax from parade to an airport, you'd almost have the same heart-warming movie. Even the mother characters are interchangeable as they merely serve to express concern over the distance between the father and son and a subplot involving a creepy suitor looking to fill the space caused by the biological father's emotional absence. The suitor, Ted, is Jingle all the Way's saving grace and the one thing that really makes this movie worth watching (in a positive way, at least). Played by the reliably fantastic Phil Hartman, Ted adopts the "Superdad" facade, but Hartman hints at something sinister hiding beneath the surface compared to Liar, Liar's oafish (still entertaining) Cary Elwes. True to form, Hartman steals every scene and leaves his stamp of quality on an otherwise unintentionally hilarious film. Aside from the stock characters (a psychotic mailman, an overly authoritative police officer, a reindeer, etc.) and over-used plot-points, the film has its pratfalls in all the right places, a chase scene involving a grown man and a small child in a playground, another small child giving the villain the classic crotch-shot, plenty of close-call saves, and mistletoe used for misanthropic sexual advances. And in the end, the hero is carried away on the shoulders of the crowd while the supporting cast looks on and smiles. Why not?