Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
EMERGENCY CHRISTMAS SPECIAL
0 Plays2 seconds ago
Helen tricks Sarah into watching Sean Hannity's straight-to-Rumble Christmas comedy Jingle Smells
Check out our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/odiumsymposium
Recommended
Transcript
Exploring Postmodern Mentality
00:00:00
Speaker
There's really nothing real. There is no real. And that's what's called the postmodern mentality. I couldn't resist the word racist remark. The adventure of life justifies its
Dark Humor in Guest Speaker Mention
00:00:12
Speaker
suffering. I don't want see him having political succubus with goblins.
00:00:15
Speaker
Do it live. Trump have babies with a goblin. Do it live! And turn against us like Darth Vader. Do it live! listen, you took a calling name. Let's get it. You'll stay faster.
00:00:26
Speaker
I was going to have a guest speaker, but the person I had invited in died.
00:00:34
Speaker
Some level of masochism. Hello, Sarah. Why the fuck did you make us watch this?
Right-Wing Christmas Movies
00:00:40
Speaker
I googled and I just like did some searching around for right-wing Christmas movie or anti-woke Christmas movie.
00:00:48
Speaker
And it seems like apparently this one people are talking about online because some big YouTuber made a video about it. We didn't watch that video, so...
00:00:59
Speaker
or I don't know. Don't comment if we stole his bits or not, because I don't even know who it is. But yeah, I found this movie and I was like, hey, Sarah, let's watch this and then talk about it.
The Experience of Bad Movies
00:01:09
Speaker
It promises to be really bad. Yeah. So that's the experience from your point of view. From my point of view, you messaged me. You were like, hey, watch this. And you linked a trailer and i didn't watch the trailer.
00:01:22
Speaker
I figured you didn't watch the trailer. I kind of knew that if you watch the trailer, you'd be like, no. I just trusted you.
00:01:32
Speaker
It's such a cool helmet. I told you it would be bad. Okay, let me let me go back into the record here. i said, okay well, my messages aren't loading, so I can't correct the record, but I did tell you that it would be bad.
00:01:44
Speaker
no you did. You absolutely did. The experience was like wading through molasses, though. This was fucking brutal. It's what? It's an hour, 700 years long, roughly? Exactly.
00:01:59
Speaker
Sometimes you I find these movies and i'm like, oh, this will be funny. And then they have this just like expansion effect. So I would say the longest movie I've ever watched was technically only 70 minutes long.
00:02:11
Speaker
And it was called... Trump versus the Illuminati. and it was this like shoddily animated, like future sci-fi, like some like Chinese clone of Donald Trump, who sort of variously throughout the movie, like is and isn't Trump. Right. So like variously, like there's one line where he goes, I don't make deals. That was the other guy. Because also the dude is doing a terrible Trump impression the whole time.
00:02:36
Speaker
But he has to like, he's like living on Mars because he escaped the like Chinese cloning thing. But then they have to like go get him because he's the only one based enough to defeat the Illuminati. Like that's the movie. It's like 70 minutes long. And I watch it with a friend and we were like, this was six hours long.
00:02:54
Speaker
This kind of reminded me of my experience watching the first Dune in theaters.
Surprise with the 'Dune' Movie
00:03:00
Speaker
I went into it with just like, I'd read the book before and I just had no idea that this was a two-parter.
00:03:07
Speaker
And it's a very long movie in any any case. We were getting near the end, and I was like, I have lost my sense of time because I'm pretty sure we're like roughly halfway through the book right now.
00:03:23
Speaker
And it feels like I've been in here for like three hours. i just This must be the magic of cinema. I'm totally absorbed. i have no idea how long I've been in here. And then the movie just like ended.
00:03:33
Speaker
And I had that experience like three times watching this, except then the movie didn't end. It just kept going. yeah that's the thing. It's like sometimes a movie can really stretch out and be that encompassing for good reasons, which is like you're really immersed in this film, right?
Analyzing 'Jingle Smells'
00:03:50
Speaker
And then sometimes what you're watching is the 2023 straight to Tubi Christmas hit Jingle Smells. Yeah. And you just feel like, I've been living in this movie for a decade. What is happening? like How did we get here? like I need to issue a small correction to you.
00:04:12
Speaker
I'm not sure this went straight to Tubi. This was definitely straight to Rumble. This was their first... Straight to Rumble? Straight to Rumble. This was their first movie-length offering on Rumble.
00:04:25
Speaker
That actually explains some questions I had. I was trying to find more like, because the movie doesn't have a Wikipedia page. The like trivia section of the year IMDB page is like Mike Huckabee has a cameo in this film.
00:04:41
Speaker
And yeah, I was trying to track down like who made this. And, you know, it's part of this whole there's like a whole right wing faith based cinema, like sort of parallel Hollywood. Right. And they get they get some people who, you know, make mainstream movies sometimes. But it's like a whole separate industry of just like different guys. You look at like, you know, the guy who
Right-Wing Cinema Industry
00:05:02
Speaker
made this. What else has he made?
00:05:03
Speaker
He's made like. a movie about the life of the Apostle Paul, like a bunch of other movies about just like having faith, right? And so this is like a whole separate sphere of cinema, but it's it's trying to...
00:05:16
Speaker
mask itself is like, oh, this is a family Christmas movie, right? And then you watch it and and you're instilled with, you know, correct thought of like evangelical values or whatever, right? This is basically the idea of this, right? But I know very little about the whole industry of how this is produced, you know, who funds these sorts of things. I mean, I know who funded this movie, executive producer Sean Hannity. Maybe we should save some of that discussion for after we've like recapped the movie. Yeah.
00:05:41
Speaker
Yeah, so let's get into it. So Jingle Smells. So the movie opens. Okay, so I already set up because I knew, you know, beat one. This is like a Sean Hannity passion project. Like, he didn't direct He fucking jump scares you in the first seconds of this movie. He didn't direct it. He didn't write it. But he's executive producer. And it's very clear that he was really involved in it. Because the first thing you hear is Sean Hannity explaining...
00:06:11
Speaker
that Mason Stone, so made up Hollywood, know, fictional Hollywood actor, action hero, Mason Stone is being quote unquote, officially canceled by Hollywood.
00:06:23
Speaker
That's the thing you can be officially canceled. There's a canceled board and it certifies your
Portrayal of Cancel Culture
00:06:30
Speaker
cancellation. Exactly. And like, so right from minute one, you know, you've got Sean Hannity jump scare, like right at the beginning and you've got,
00:06:41
Speaker
We're living in this right wing fever dream, right? We're living in the world, the right wing that these people think we live in or are constantly trying to say we live in where cancel culture is this like official thing that exists, right?
00:06:56
Speaker
That's right. It's like a demon that's hunting everyone at all times. This movie is too airless to portray it in any such literal way. That would be far more entertaining. But, you know, it's always hovering around the edges.
00:07:08
Speaker
Yeah. So there's constantly and actually to the extent um that it gets personified, we'll talk about it, but it it gets personified in like exactly the way you would imagine. okay but before we get more into the the politics of this movie, we we meet the main character.
00:07:24
Speaker
Who is this like the most generic white dude you can imagine, right? Like I'm struggling to even picture him now. It's unbelievable. You take a butter knife and you dip it into a jar of mayonnaise and the blob that comes out on the end. That's this guy.
00:07:37
Speaker
Exactly. And his name is Nick. And you might think, oh, Nick, do you mean like Saint Nick? Is this some kind of Christmas theme? And somebody will refer to him as Saint Nick by the end of the movie. So he's sort of our everyman hero who will eventually take up the mantle of of Christmas cheer. Right. But when we meet him, he's at his lowest point.
00:07:57
Speaker
He's in prison. He's playing ukulele in prison. Yeah, not sure how that works, but there it is. He's there in jail and playing ukulele hanging out. And you're like, oh, no, like he's, you know, this is going to be this guy's journey through jail. But good news. His dad's the chief of police. He could just let him out.
00:08:14
Speaker
So his dad shows up, explains to the officer in charge, oh, he's not a real perp and just lets his son out. And they try to like also have him be like a hard-ass dad, like telling him off. But it's like it's hard to be the hard-ass dad if you're also just using your position as chief of police to just let your son out of jail or whatever you want, right?
00:08:33
Speaker
This is actually part of the major conflict of the movie outside of what's going on with the main character is just the dad's like softness towards the son. Yeah, and I think this is a really good... Immediately, all the themes we've been talking about, especially with our like Sartre episode, we really see this is the vision of society that they're living in here, right?
00:08:55
Speaker
Why is it you know
Misconceptions in 'Jingle Smells'
00:08:56
Speaker
not fundamentally undermining this whole vision of law and order and of of doing things the right way and of of being correct to just... use your position as chief of police to constantly get your son out of jail?
00:09:06
Speaker
Well, because he's one of the good ones, right? this This is the, this is the group of, this is the in-group. This is the group of people who they, they are part of the dominant, correct culture. And so we don't really need to worry about, you know, enforcing laws. I don't know i immediately, I was like, oh, this is crazy because it's two minutes into this movie. We've already introduced cancel culture is real.
00:09:25
Speaker
Hollywood officially cancels people. And if you're a white Christian, like it's kind of chill. You can do whatever you want and your dad can let you out of jail. And there's no, this isn't a story about the fact that he's a corrupt cop. This is just like, yeah, of course.
00:09:38
Speaker
Yeah. It's just a mild moral failing on the part of the sun. That's really all that's going on there. And okay. And so then the dad is like, oh, but your real punishment is i got you a job. You have to work as a sanitation worker, right? You have to work picking up garbage. Yeah. And the son, who is wearing just kind of a generic slacker outfit of some kind, is like, oh, no job.
00:10:04
Speaker
Which really played into my initial perception that he was going to be some sort of pussy liberal. Yeah, he's he's supposed to be this kind of like completely degenerate lazy piece of shit, like character that is going to then be, you know, his this this movie is going to be about his growth towards being a, a correct and upstanding Christian member of society or whatever.
00:10:28
Speaker
but yeah, it's really funny that it's, you know, garbage man, like as if these jobs aren't really sought after, right? I'm not going to say that it's totally a glamorous thing to be a garbage man, but these are not easy jobs to get. These are, I think we're going to have a lot to say about how this movie regards the role and status of the garbage man.
00:10:46
Speaker
Yeah. So, but it's, it's totally used up here as like, oh, shitty job that because of your past moral failings and becoming a lazy piece of shit, and now you have to work your way up and start with this job that like, obviously everyone hates and that's your punishment, right? Your punishment is that you have to get this job, which is pretty okay.
00:11:08
Speaker
i don't know. Like it's, it's fascinating. There's so much ideology happening. Okay. So they set this up, and then we're going to get more into e the other plot of the movie, the the cancellation, right? Or the other strand that that that's been starting. we We pan to the news.
00:11:25
Speaker
Did you recognize who this anchor was? ah No, I didn't recognize anyone in this movie. So they we get like the local news, and one of the anchors is played by this right-wing comedian, Jim Brewer, who was like on SNL in the ninety s And then had a completely just radicalizing right wing arc where he basically just gets up on stage and says offensive things and then people laugh and he's like, oh, I triggered the libs. Like that's like him. Like he is one of these guys.
00:11:59
Speaker
Many such cases, like almost the entire right wing media apparatus is some variation on this. Some guy who is like trying to go into entertainment and then to one degree or another, it didn't work out.
00:12:11
Speaker
And they ended up just triggering the lives professionally. Well, that's the thing that's funny. He was on SNL for six years. like He had some pretty big success and he's... There's another SNL alum, which I only know about because I was like desperately trying to find some kind of information about this movie. And we'll meet her very shortly.
00:12:32
Speaker
Yeah, he's supposed to be doing this like comedy news anchor bit. Totally doesn't work. And actually, this is one of my main disappointments of this movie. i was hoping to be triggered, right? Like, you know, we're libs like one of our favorite things. I mean, maybe i don't want to speak for you, but one of my favorite things to do as a lib is to like go and be triggered by media. Right. And this this movie completely failed to trigger me. Right. There was just not. Yeah, I was hoping to be lying on the floor, pounding my fists on the ground, tears of rage in my eyes. Yeah, like, oh, he can't keep getting away with it. But they really didn't get away with anything. Yeah. But it just didn't happen. The whole thing is really limp.
00:13:10
Speaker
Yeah, so the news anchor keeps keeps making these jokes, but they don't quite make sense, right? So he's like, oh, Mason Stone, he's caught between a stone and a hard place, which, like, isn't funny.
00:13:20
Speaker
no They explain that he's canceled. And why is he canceled? Why is he canceled, Zara? Yeah. Well, it's the fantasy of every right winger, which is that all the people being canceled are being canceled because they just love America so much and they say it.
00:13:37
Speaker
It's that expression of their pure hearts that's really the target of the evil forces in society. Yeah, so they play a clip of him saying, God bless America and support the troops. And that's what he's being canceled for. Not even holding a gun, he's holding a crossbow.
00:13:52
Speaker
or he's holding a bow and arrow. And they're like, he's being canceled for holding a loaded weapon and and saying nationalist rhetoric. Yeah. ah Yeah, needless to say, if you find out why someone is actually quote unquote canceled on the right, like half the time they're faking it for clout, very white style.
00:14:11
Speaker
And then half the time it's because they said something like, yeah, we got to put the Jews in the mass graves. Like we don't have a choice anymore. We're sad about it, but it's time to make it happen. And then they do this totally flat joke here where he's canceled for this and for refusing to do a fundraiser for a Democrat presidential candidate.
00:14:34
Speaker
And one of the things he's being accused of is turophobia, which is a fear of cheese. like There's just this like attempt at a joke that I just totally didn't understand what the punchline was.
00:14:47
Speaker
i just wrote at this point, this is so incoherent. like I'm struggling to explain what happened on the screen because there's just nothing to it. There's a long right-wing interest in getting upset at the term homophobia because they insist on interpreting it literally as like fear of homosexuals.
00:15:09
Speaker
And I think this cheese thing is just kind of a play on that. Like, oh, the lefties are always accusing us of ridiculous fears that we don't actually have. At this point, we meet the personification of cancel culture.
00:15:23
Speaker
They go to a quote-unquote, an activist who's going to explain why Mason Stone,
Critique of Film's Leftist Caricature
00:15:29
Speaker
why it's unacceptable for Mason Stone to have done these things. And we meet, like, again, the movie is just so steeped in this right-wing world.
00:15:39
Speaker
We meet this woman who short curly hair. She's got like crystals around her neck, like this sort of right wing imaginary boogeyman of what a leftist looks like, I guess.
00:15:51
Speaker
But it's like a wine mom who has who's into crystals and she's literally shrieking like she shrieks all of her lines. It's pretty painful to listen to. It's kind of indescribable, actually. really want to just like tear the headphones off.
00:16:09
Speaker
It really is this like misogynist portrayal of, oh, these women are always just shrieking about this stuff. And she's specifically shrieking about how a piece of shit Mason Stone is and how he's an imperialist and et cetera, et cetera. And also she manages to sneak in that she really wants to fuck him.
00:16:28
Speaker
Then they cut to sort of the main villain of the movie, the CEO of a toy company called Cashbro, which is Hasbro, of course.
00:16:39
Speaker
Yeah, but it's also funny because it's Hasbro, but then the the joke is that they're too obsessed with money, i guess, right? That's why they're calling it Cashbro.
00:16:50
Speaker
But isn't that good? like I don't know what the critique is there. I don't think it's presented as a problem that they're obsessed with money. I think the issue is more... i Well, I think cash flow is just an unfunny pun on Hasbro.
00:17:06
Speaker
And the concept is that they're fascinated by money, but they're not actually good at evaluating what will make them money, which is pandering to the spirit of the true Americans.
00:17:19
Speaker
Instead, they're constantly kowtowing to the woke mob. Right. They're pandering to the wrong group. That's right. And he's explaining that Mason Stone doesn't align with their corporate values anymore.
00:17:32
Speaker
And so they're canceling their like action figure tie-ins that were going to be these huge, you know, Christmas is right around the corner. So this was going to be their big seller to, to, to buy kids all these action figures because we're like also living in, even though the movie is supposed to take place in 2023, when it comes out, we're also living in the older, like right wing Gen X or boomer fantasy where the ultimate toy is like,
00:17:58
Speaker
an action figure. And that's where but that's what all the kids want is like the latest action figure from the latest superhero movie. That's right. And he's a little bit reluctant to do this, not for any moral reasons or because he believes in the spirit of true America, but I don't know, just because he's already invested all this money in this, but he has two scheming viziers.
00:18:21
Speaker
They are advising him that he's got to get rid of all these toys. He's got to cut ties with Mason Stone. That's kind of the the setup of all the major players. So now we're going to get sort of get development in all these stories.
00:18:33
Speaker
The next montage, we don't need to spend too long on this. I just think it's a really funny bit about how like poorly funded that this movie was. We then get a ah montage of Nick and his two co-workers picking up garbage and like getting into the Christmas spirit of being garbage men.
00:18:50
Speaker
But the montage is just the same three things. It's... them having a pillow fight with pillows they found in the trash, like that' pushing each other in it yeah them pushing each other in a shopping cart, and them like playing catch next to the the truck, but they cut between these three shots like five times.
00:19:14
Speaker
It's the most like we only have the budget for, you know, 20 minutes of footage and I need to make a whole montage here. So we'll just make it seem like they're right. it And it'll be about their routine. and So apparently the routine of the garbage man is you play catch, you get into pillow fights and you ride around in a shopping cart.
00:19:32
Speaker
Yeah. Well, I think he's finding out that having a job is not so bad after all, because apparently you get to have a little bit of fun doing these three extremely specific things.
00:19:43
Speaker
And, um, okay. And so then he gets a text from his dad. Who's like, Oh, I want to talk to you. So he goes to the local, you know, cafe. Oh, don't forget. he also, what is it? He finds, he finds a Mason stone, like action figure or something in the garbage. Oh,
00:20:01
Speaker
They find a movie. His coworker informs him, oh, they're trying to cancel Mason Stone. And he immediately converts that into, whoa, they're trying to kill Stone? He says they're trying to kill Stone.
00:20:12
Speaker
is it this scene or is it a later scene where he goes like, oh, it's probably all over some just like one college student who got triggered.
00:20:20
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's this scene. But yeah, he's like, they're trying to kill Stone, right? And that's, I'm glad you remember that because I forgot to write that down. But that's such a key thing about this imaginary is that canceling is death. We're going to have a trial later on that I think is going to have some interesting execution parallels, but we'll get to that.
00:20:40
Speaker
So his dad texts him while he's in his shitty apartment and is like, hey, Come do some shots with me, which I think at this point, we've already learned that he's been drinking quite a lot while he's been in a slump. So you're like, whoa, what's going on here?
00:20:56
Speaker
And the joke is that actually his dad wants to do espresso shots with him at the cafe down the street. Yeah. So they go to the cafe and I wrote down in my notes here, Santa is playing a guitar because they have this dude who sucks at guitar, by the way, who's just like a Santa archetype.
00:21:15
Speaker
And so i was just like, oh, that's funny. They got like dude with like a white beard who's like he looks all jolly and he's playing guitar like this is the Santa figure. Everyone in the cafe seems like annoyed by his guitar playing, except for like Nick, who is constantly telling his dad to tip him.
00:21:28
Speaker
Which is like really funny. That guy playing the guitar is the writer of the movie. Oh my god. Okay. That's really funny because he really can't act.
00:21:40
Speaker
And no one in this movie can act, so it doesn't really stand out. But he really can't. I'm going to be completely real with you. i think he's the best actor in this movie. By a lot. That's the thing, is that he might actually be...
00:21:53
Speaker
Because no one in this movie can act like. Yeah, there's not a single person who sells their lines. So what do I have for this cafe scene? Oh, yeah. So first you learn his dad, right? Basically, they said at the classic situation, his dad is an alpha and he's a beta. And it's like the dad, the alpha dad trying to like teach the son how to like be a proper alpha.
00:22:14
Speaker
You learn that they're both vets of the war in Afghanistan. Yeah. Yeah, this is super interesting. So they served like 20 years apart, and his dad has not come out of it with any visible trauma issues, but the son has.
00:22:29
Speaker
And what's explicitly said is that the son has trauma because the withdrawal went so badly. What's happening here is that it's being implied that War is fine.
00:22:42
Speaker
It's a healthy man experience. But the liberals managed to botch war so badly that they traumatized this poor young man. At this point, they talk about him having trauma. And basically, they talk about him having PTSD, although i don't know if they actually name it as PTSD.
00:22:58
Speaker
But they're trying to like imply that he has the kind of PTSD that just makes you a lazy piece of shit. Like... The extent of his like struggles with mental health, it's not like, oh, this is a character
PTSD Misrepresentation
00:23:12
Speaker
struggling with mental health. So it comes as kind of a surprise when you learn, oh, he's actually a vet, because he just kind of lays around and doesn't do anything, which is not what PTSD does.
00:23:23
Speaker
Right. i have In my notes here, I have, the son is a veteran, all caps, not WOKE.
00:23:32
Speaker
Yeah, so it's it's it's such a confusing mix of things. Like, he has the PTSD that turns you into a liberal cuck, and his alpha dad needs to cure him of that somehow. Like, that's the dynamic of this movie.
00:23:47
Speaker
By the way, a big part of the dad's kindness and mentoring of his son here is just immediately shitting on him having the garbage man job. He's like, wait, what are you moving up? What are you moving up from this, man? Yeah, what are you doing? He's like, you you have more potential than this. Why are you a garbage man? And it's like, buddy, you just got him this job a week ago from like he was in jail.
00:24:11
Speaker
oh God. And the dad is like, what are you going to start dating? Like when are you going to get a woman and like start having kids? Right. Because it's like, okay, you're behind schedule for like getting a better job. And right. He's, he's read the Joseph pack. Like what's the right trajectory for the life cycle of a man. He's like, you're behind.
00:24:28
Speaker
Okay, so they have their meeting, and then the dad has a conversation with his girlfriend. It's over the phone, and so we cut back and forth between the dad in his truck later that day and the girlfriend in her apartment.
00:24:43
Speaker
It is surreal. So first off, I have in my notes... shrew on the loose, describing the girlfriend. She just fucking hates Nick, and she's totally bitchy, and she's like, I need attention.
00:24:57
Speaker
i need attention. More of this relationship should be about me. Part of the surreal atmosphere here is that the dad in his truck is against what looks like some kind of painted backdrop, which has very minimal level of detail.
00:25:12
Speaker
And the girlfriend in her apartment is also in an apartment that's weirdly low on detail. It looks like some sort of like liminal space. She's constantly patting this makeup brush against her for the whole like minutes-long scene as she's talking.
00:25:27
Speaker
There's this weird, like almost like Twin Peaks-y music playing as she talks. It's very strange. This is the kind of detail that made me say, like, later I was telling Sarah about this, I was like, this movie feels like having a bad time on ketamine. Like, watching this movie, I felt like I was having a bad time on ketamine because everyone is acting weird, but they're all just not, right? They all seem to have just found out how to move their bodies and how to talk to each other, like...
00:25:56
Speaker
they're very new to it and so it's just like what is happening and
Symbolism of Nick's Life
00:26:03
Speaker
then the funny part is the most filled out apartment so around this time we also get to see nick's apartment because know now nick is like lying at home and he's just like loafing about and his apartment is like astoundingly dirty and the thing is that it's like If he were to clean it, it'd be a nice apartment. It's like a relatively nice, like living space. Presumably that he's got like a separate, like living room, kitchen bedroom. Like it's a good sized apartment.
00:26:30
Speaker
And the thing that's wrong with it is just, there's like shit everywhere. Like it's so dirty and not in the way of like, Oh, you know, the apartment's got a messy, like there's dirt all over the walls.
00:26:42
Speaker
Well, I think everything that's wrong with his life has to be his fault on some level. Okay. His living situation sucks. It's because he's not picking up after himself. He doesn't have a job. It's because he doesn't want one. He has PTSD. It's because, I don't know, he needs to gird up his balls a little bit.
00:26:58
Speaker
Yeah, he's woke and soy. Yeah. So he's watching this like old classic Christmas movie. And so I actually made a little list here because I noticed this is the second time. So throughout this movie, we're constantly getting like the last shot of a made up classic, like 40s or 50s Christmas movie.
00:27:14
Speaker
And the first one is called Suing Santa. Right. We get like the scene of Santa... in court being sued and then later there's a scene where like someone is like Santa you made it home and it's like Santa says like I told you I would come home and then they'd like the voice is like and that was Santa come home and I think it's making fun of this era of like black and white 40s and 50s like low budget Christmas slop movies but I don't really know what grounds this movie has to make fun of those because this is even worse And the funny thing is i I made a little table in my notes. I was like, okay, I'm going to go back here and fill this out with the other titles. Those are the only two.
00:27:51
Speaker
I can't help but think that they just really thought that these one-off little bits would be like hilarious and and that they wanted to sprinkle them because there's no real thematic resonance.
Ethics and Ownership Conflict
00:28:01
Speaker
It doesn't do anything in the movie.
00:28:03
Speaker
Okay, so Nick and his interminable co-worker get hired to pick up some goods from a warehouse and dispose of them.
00:28:14
Speaker
Yeah, we get introduced to like every character in this movie is such a stock character. So they they get a call. They're like, oh, we got we got to get to work. Right. And actually, on the way we meet that his coworker is obsessed with like little figurines.
00:28:27
Speaker
And in particular, has this one little figurine of a parrot wearing a cross whose name is Apostle Polly. But he's like, I take him everywhere. He's like my spirit guide. But yeah, they go to this warehouse and.
00:28:39
Speaker
And they get given this job by the stock. Like he's a no nonsense black guy. Like that's who he is. like Yeah. I have in my notes wildly unfunny black guy doing black guy shtick.
00:28:51
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. and he basically explains you have a really top secret sensitive job. i don't even know who the client is. You got to get rid of all of these in a week. Okay, bye And he just like leaves them alone with this warehouse full of stuff after explaining to them how important it is that like this be disposed of properly. And so, of course, they talk themselves into opening some of the boxes. And it turns out that these are the toys Cashbro is trying to get rid of.
00:29:18
Speaker
Actually, the way they talk themselves into it is one of my favorite lines in the movie. His coworker says, my sanitation senses are tingling. That could have been good if someone else had delivered it in a different movie with a different setup.
00:29:33
Speaker
Yeah, I actually think this actor was on drugs the entire time but I can buy that. Every line delivery, he, like, looks at the dude and he, like, has to, like, you can see the effort he's making just make his face look normal.
00:29:48
Speaker
And he just goes, his sanitation senses are too long. Oh, my God, it's such an incoherent movie. And they're like, oh, it's these action figures. And then my second, you know, this was a great scene because like action figures like ah and the guy's like, these are these are valuable, right? His co-workers like these could be valuable. We could, you know, we could probably get money for these.
00:30:11
Speaker
And Nick is like, what are you talking about? And the guy goes, don't you ever listen to a podcast? Where do you get your news? That actually kind of is a good line. Yeah, a huge, like, podcast representation there. Okay, so he's like, oh, okay.
00:30:25
Speaker
I know a guy who could assess these... He's a toy collector YouTube influencer named Pop Frog. He could tell you how much these are worth. But also we shouldn't do it because that's stealing.
00:30:37
Speaker
Okay, time to take lunch break and like leaves. There's this whole discussion about the ethics of taking action figures from the trash that gets repeated several times through the movie.
00:30:50
Speaker
And I could not for the life of me see how I was supposed to have any sympathy for the position that you should just like not take these action figures. They're anticipating like their audience caring about the corporate bottom line.
00:31:06
Speaker
race like They're anticipating an audience that thinks like corporate profits are actually important. Well, we have to remember that these are people who are fully ready to pour contempt on homeless people for getting food out of dumpsters.
00:31:24
Speaker
Yeah. And like, that's part of it, right? Is like, like these kinds of questions of like, who, who does own stuff in the trash, like is something they actually care about. Right. And so I think, you know, right wingers do actually think it's a form of stealing to take stuff from dumpsters.
00:31:38
Speaker
so So now they actually have to address that, but it's like, The movie wants you to conclude at the end that it's actually it's OK to steal from the trash here because they were being like woke and doing cancel culture, which is against the spirit of Christmas. I mean, it's it's very like it gets back to a very Sartrean position, right?
00:31:56
Speaker
The real laws are like the nice Christian ones and the spirit of Christmas and the spirit of Christmas supersedes like what the actual material legal situation in the country is.
00:32:07
Speaker
Yeah, and they're going to walk us forward from recognizing that committing this little sin of taking things from the trash, which of course we don't view as a sin at all, but in the right-wing imaginary is a sin.
00:32:18
Speaker
That's going to lead into actually stealing goods from the warehouse later.
Inappropriate Humor
00:32:23
Speaker
Spoiler. And that is also going to be excused on the grounds that it's allegiance to the true imaginary law of the state that like floats in their conception.
00:32:32
Speaker
Right. So, okay, so then we meet... a really, really cursed scene where we meet a child. He meets a child who's being bullied. And I would say so far, we've seen like deranged right wing content.
00:32:48
Speaker
We've seen like misogynist portrayal of like the shrieking activists. But I would say for me, this is one of the big odium moments where I think if he had managed to deliver this line better, it would have triggered me. But I actually had to go back and listen to it again because I didn't hear him the first time because he doesn't deliver the line.
00:33:07
Speaker
So this kid tells him, like, oh, my my bike chain is broken because these girls are always teasing me and throwing rocks at me. And the guy said, he totally throws away this line. He says, they're throwing rocks.
00:33:22
Speaker
What is this? The West Bank? And I just was like, what? Because he also mumbles it. So it's like they wrote this joke. They're clearly proud of it because it's like a horrible joke.
00:33:34
Speaker
And then he just like he throws it away. and that's so much of this movie. Like it it it would be so much more offensive than it is if like the acting and editing had been competent. But really, it just all kind of gets lost in this mess. Nobody commits to their lines in this movie.
00:33:49
Speaker
they don't They don't just like go for it, except in one instance, which is extremely funny that we'll get to later. There's this really great moment where the kid is like, oh, I don't know if i should tell you like about the bullying. He's like, oh, you can tell me.
00:34:04
Speaker
I'm a garbage man. This kid looks to him for advice, solace, help repairing the bicycle. And he gives this kid fucking nothing.
00:34:15
Speaker
He does not help the kid at all in this first meeting. At the end, he's like, okay, well, you know what? Let's get your bike home. And he picks up the bike and he starts carrying it home. The fucking chain is broken. You can just wheel it.
00:34:28
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. So now we get a scene with the Cashbro CEO. So this is actually, actually the Cashbro CEO might be the most famous actor in this. I couldn't place him, but he's been in a couple things.
00:34:41
Speaker
He apparently has hundreds of credits. He'll just appear in any movie. He's actually, he's got a small role in the dark night, apparently, but he was maybe like along with the guitar player who they just keep calling a troubadour. He was maybe like,
00:34:58
Speaker
the most competent actor. But at the same time, that's a very low bar. Like he was not good by any means, but he's there. He's talking to his lawyers. He's like, Hey, i don't like that.
00:35:10
Speaker
We just like are destroying millions of dollars of merch merchandise. this was going to be our big like Christmas, you know, profit maker. And the lawyers are explaining like, well, you know, that's that's cancel culture. Like that's, you know, we got to we got to have that's just the way the world works now. Like and actually he goes like, oh, this cancel culture thing is crazy.
00:35:29
Speaker
And but one of the lawyers goes, actually, they don't like calling it cancel culture anymore. They want to call it accountability culture. And he gives this like classic right wing thing where they just like string together all of all of the things they say. Right. Accountability is when there's proof or Accountability is when there's proof you did something wrong. He says, what happened to innocent until proven guilty?
00:35:50
Speaker
What happened to due process? Which like right now hearing like these guys grandstand about due process is like maddening, right? Incredible. Incredible. I was thinking about that watching. I was like, okay, these are the same people who in a few years are going to be kidnapping people and sending them to fucking concentration camps in two countries.
00:36:10
Speaker
And then the lawyer is like, well, we have to be sensitive to the prevailing culture. And the CEO is like, well, I'm upset because I thought the toy business was supposed to be fun, but this isn't fun because cancel culture is ruining everything.
00:36:25
Speaker
and he refers to, he says, this is all because of the participation trophy generation. so we like we get like a bingo of like every... Every trope.
00:36:36
Speaker
And then one of the lawyers explains that his plan is that they're going to make all that money back because he has this toy idea that's going to sell like crazy, which is military monsters.
00:36:48
Speaker
So there's Tank and Stein and War Wolf are his two ideas. And credit to this movie, the joke is that those are terrible ideas and those toys don't sell.
00:36:59
Speaker
I wish we got a visual of the terrible toys at some point. It doesn't happen. Yeah. So, okay, then we get the first scene with Popfrog, who is just this, like, annoying influencer who first is like, ugh, like, why are you stalking me? And the dude is like, oh, no, I have something to show you. He's like, I have this, like, discontinued toy, right, that's that that wasn't that's not going to be released. It's really valuable.
00:37:20
Speaker
He's like, oh, you know, it would be valuable, like, if it were real, but I bet it's fake. He's like, I have to examine it. And then he just hands him the box, and the guy looks at he goes, like, wow, this is real.
00:37:32
Speaker
Yeah, it it takes an instance. As soon as he touches the cardboard, basically, he knows. So he ends up selling this thing for like a couple hundred bucks and then is like, hey.
00:37:43
Speaker
Oh, by the way, the influencer streams on Rumble. Tie in. Oh, yeah, that was that was an important thing that when they in this actually comes up earlier, they're like, oh, this. um This influencer, and I said, I think I even said YouTube influencer earlier, and I was watching, i was like, why is he on Rumble? And so when I learned, when you said that ah this was their first feature release, I was like, okay, this makes sense. It's like a Rumble.
00:38:06
Speaker
It's like a Rumble product placement. It's occurring to me that the listener may not actually know what Rumble is. Rumble is the far right YouTube slash Twitch alternative. Yeah. Yeah.
00:38:18
Speaker
Nick Fuentes streams on there. Also, this guy, ugh, Popfrog, he has this catchphrase. Even after hearing it like 15 fucking times over the course of the movie, I'm still not sure I'm remembering it correctly. It's like jiggle like jelly or something. And the movie's conviction that we are going to find that catchphrase magnetic is inexplicable.
00:38:41
Speaker
It expects us to be like fully committed, like standing up from our fucking seats every time it comes out. Yeah. And in fact, in this scene where he sells the thing, the guy's like, ooh, you know, we come to a deal here and you know what we're going to do. And Nick is like, oh, come on, don't say it. He's like, come on, just once. So there's like this really big buildup. And then it's like the punchline end of the scene. He goes, jiggle like jelly. And I was just like, did I miss something?
00:39:03
Speaker
So now we cut back to the restaurant, which I think is the same as the coffee shop, because there's kind of only there's not that many locations like this wasn't really a high budget movie. Santa is black back playing the guitar again and again, just like playing the same two chords back and forth. And then they cut away and then they pipe in some music. That's like presumably what he's playing.
00:39:23
Speaker
The dad is having dinner with his girlfriend. I wrote here, the demanding woman GF is back and she's just being more demanding again. Like, oh, you're spending too much time. Like, you know, they're they're talking about, you know, their lives or whatever. And then like, oh, yeah, I'm really worried about my son, Nick, who like just got out of jail and is like got this new job and, you know, has, you know, dealing with his like being a war vet and all these things. And then his, um,
00:39:47
Speaker
His girlfriend is like, oh, you're always talking about your son. That's right. When is it going to be about me? what is it going to be about me? She's basically like, you need to dump your son. She's framed as this loathsome harpy, but the truth is her tough love attitude is completely in line with the movie's philosophy.
00:40:05
Speaker
Yeah, it's kind of like the only thing that's wrong is that it's like an annoying woman saying it. Yeah, later on, later on, she's going to be framed as heroic in the story, but like nothing's going to change.
00:40:18
Speaker
She's going to be exactly the same. In this scene, she's like, oh, you lent him more money or you gave him more money. And he's like, yeah, I give him a loan. He's like, oh, he's and he never pays the money back. Like you're just giving him money and you're talking about him all the time. And why can't we talk about me? And then the dad is like, OK, fine. You know, we won't talk about him. it won't It'll be all about you.
00:40:35
Speaker
Nick shows up, crashes the dinner and just like hands the dad a lot of cash. And the dad is like, where did you get this cash? and He's like, oh, I'm paying back the loan. and That's like, where'd you get this cash? He's oh, don't worry about it. And then he leaves.
00:40:47
Speaker
Like, totally not so suspicious at all. Okay, we get another scene where the Cash Pro CEO learns that this YouTuber, or sorry, this Rumble streamer has made a video with this supposed this toy that's supposed to be destroyed.
00:41:02
Speaker
And then they're like, oh, how did this, like, how did Popfrog get his hands on the toy? And it's like, I don't know, maybe this warehouse that you just left, like, gave gave just two random guys a week to destroy everything in it? Like, that would be my first guess. Like, oh, we're looking into it. We're looking into it.
00:41:21
Speaker
So... Nick realizes that this Silas kid who he didn't help at all previously, he's like, oh, I know just the thing. I know just how to help him. And he gives him one of the action figures. Right. And this is kind of a key moment in the movie. This is where Nick starts to take on the mantle of Jingle Smells.
00:41:41
Speaker
I didn't mention it before, but in this scene where the kid is explaining he gets bullied, like the girls do show up and they start bullying him again. And Nick is like, hey, back off. And they call he's wearing a Santa hat, so they call him Jingle Smells. And they sing this song, Jingle Smells, Stinking All the Way. And that becomes a sort of anthem of celebration for this like folk, like Robin Hood-esque hero, Jingle Smells.
00:42:09
Speaker
But yeah, so this is this is where he's born, right? This is the like superhero being born scene. He like puts on the Santa hat, puts on a mask, but of course it's not. write It's like a bandana and gets his like garbage bag sack and like leaves this like wrapped up action figure, just like Merry Christmas from Jingle Smells to this kid.
00:42:29
Speaker
The kid talks to him the next day and is like, oh my God, I know it was you. like You talked to Santa. This is the scene where I put in my notes, I want everyone in this movie to get run over with a garbage truck. Yeah, so actually this this scene has one of the other jokes that accidentally works, but for reasons that they don't intend, which is that he's like, okay, we can't tell anyone.
00:42:52
Speaker
You know, I have some toys that I'm going to distribute, but, you know, you can't tell anyone. We have to keep it totally secret, right Because he doesn't want this kid to tell people because obviously he's getting the toys illegally.
00:43:02
Speaker
and he's like, you know, we have to keep it a secret. You can't tell a single person. And the kid goes like, what about the president? And he goes, no, don't go near him. And of course, when this movie came out, Biden was the president.
00:43:15
Speaker
Yeah, I did a quick Google just to make sure that this was in the Biden era. So this is about Biden, but it it's like it's so incredibly funny during the Trump administration to have this joke of like, don't go near the president because like, of course, like,
00:43:33
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. We got some news about our pedophile in chief today. That was so nasty that I just like swore off social media for the day. It's, it's truly, truly sickening stuff. So yeah But then he tells, he tells him like, Oh, all these kids in this like poor neighborhood, they would love to get something that cool for
Superficial Charity
00:43:54
Speaker
Christmas. Right.
00:43:55
Speaker
And like, at this point I'm realizing like, This is a movie about the spirit of giving in which this man gives poor children trash. Like, Like, this is like, oh yeah, they're poor. like They just want garbage for Christmas sake.
00:44:13
Speaker
It's so offensive. This is like the the right-wing conception of what helping poor people is, right? You give them little smatterings of charity around the edges, and it must always be charity. It must always be voluntary. Right. And it's just aesthetic garbage. You don't actually improve the systems that surround their lives in any way.
00:44:32
Speaker
Yeah. And actually to like kind of hammer this point home, he's walking home after having this conversation. He's thinking like, OK, what am I going to do? Because now he's kind of got to think about like, what's he going to do with these toys? Because he has the opportunity to sell them. Now, he could sell them and make a lot of money and actually help these kids. That's not what's going to happen.
00:44:51
Speaker
Absolutely. I kept thinking about that through the movie. these These things, it's supposed to be a big sacrifice on his part because he's giving away things that are valuable collector's items. He could sell them for a lot of money.
00:45:02
Speaker
So why doesn't he just fucking do that and then give the kids something more substantial than these shitty plastic action figures? Right. And so he's like pondering this decision and he's walking home and we get one of those quick moments. That's like one of my favorite little visual things. It's just like totally incoherent.
00:45:19
Speaker
The price gouging tree salesman. Right. So it's just like this couple is looking at a tree and the tree has this like $400 price tag on it or something. And they like clearly are looking at each other like, oh, i don't know if we can afford this. And then in the foreground of the shot,
00:45:34
Speaker
There's just this like old dude wearing a fedora who's like counting his like stacks of money and smiling. It's such a weird, like I've never seen like the dude who's selling Christmas trees be portrayed as like the Scrooge, right?
00:45:48
Speaker
I don't know that I've ever seen the dude who's selling Christmas trees portrayed at all. Yeah, that's thing. Like, I don't have a lot of experience buying Christmas trees because I've never bought a Christmas tree because Jewish on salary Christmas.
00:46:00
Speaker
To the extent that I've seen, like, people selling Christmas trees, you know, when I'm walking around the city, it's always, like, often it's, like, some teenager who's just, like, getting paid minimum wage to, like, stand there and, like, sell Christmas, right? It's just, like...
00:46:12
Speaker
this This figure of the like the fat cat Christmas tree salesman is just so funny. i feel like if we had more experience in the hack family comedy genre, maybe...
00:46:25
Speaker
we would recognize this as some sort of trope, or at least we would understand that the getting the Christmas tree process is some sort of stock comedic. Yeah, maybe. so yeah, my notes I wrote here are, this dude is the worst Robin Hood. Why doesn't he just sell the toys? Yeah, so this is where he starts to go around. He tells the kid like,
00:46:45
Speaker
he tells the kid, okay, I need you to give me a list of the names and addresses of bunch of children who live around here. Don't tell anyone. And like, this is supposed to be cool.
00:46:57
Speaker
then he goes around. And he gives them all plastic trash. Like, because the thing kids really want is like an action figure for a movie that's not being released.
00:47:08
Speaker
um And then, okay, then we get another news segment. So it's time for our favorite, ah you know, right wing comedian to come back. He explains, you know, oh, you know, jingle smell. Like there's this guy who gave her a game around, ah went around giving presents.
00:47:23
Speaker
There's just like clips of like kids like unwrapping their presents and being just like fully ecstatic at these action figures because of course they're so poor that they've never held something this cool before in their in their little poor hands. It's such a like pathetic portrayal.
00:47:42
Speaker
And they're all looking at the camera. They're like, thank you, Jingle Smells. And then one of the parents says, it's a Jingle Smells miracle. The unfunny lib woman returns.
00:47:53
Speaker
She invades the TV studio, just works herself up into a frenzy. And by the end, she is just screaming.
00:48:04
Speaker
And that's the joke. Yeah. And we're not talking about like stage screaming or something. She's just actually screaming, which is so, it so painful to hear. Yeah. Okay, so we go back to the cafe. You go back to the The dad is like, where are you getting all this money? I know that you're not getting this money from your like unpaid, you know, your badly paid garbage worker job.
00:48:26
Speaker
And Nick is like, no, don't worry about it. And then he gets a phone call and it's pop frog. And the whole purpose of this scene is that the dad over here is Nick saying like, no, I said I can get you more. Like, that's not my whole stash. Like, I know I can get you more. Just hold on a few days. And the dad is like, oh, my son is selling drugs.
00:48:42
Speaker
And so he's like, you know, i will arrest you. And, you know, like, I will have to bust you at some point if you're doing stuff that's illegal. And Nick is like, no, don't worry. So then they go back to the warehouse.
00:48:54
Speaker
Finally, Cashbro has realized, like, oh, The source of the toys is the warehouse where all the toys are, and they've locked it. Great little line here from the the warehouse manager doing the unfunny black guy shtick.
00:49:08
Speaker
He says, Gentlemen, if I may bestow that title upon you... This scene has some just very unfunny jokes. And so then they leave and Nick just comes and breaks in later.
00:49:20
Speaker
And so he just keeps distributing toys, right? He's got the list of like where all these kids live, and like their names and addresses. Starts delivering more toys. Oh, I actually think, okay, this is when the the, then we go back to the news because they get Mason Stone on the news.
00:49:37
Speaker
And he's like, I think it's so cool that someone has been able to take, you know, this bad situation and turn it into something positive that's like filled with the Christmas spirits. Like i support jingle smells.
00:49:49
Speaker
This is when the activist breaks back into the studio because I wrote here that that whole thing ends with like her shrieking and then getting carted off by security. And then you just hear, I think I swallowed my nose ring.
00:50:01
Speaker
Oh, you're right. You're right. Okay. My mistake. But then as if that wasn't bad enough, Sean Hannity is back. So this has made national news. Now, everything in this movie so far has been localized to a very small town in New Mexico where the toy influencer and the garbage company and cash bro all like are located Like all of this is very, very local.
00:50:24
Speaker
And now it's just like Sean Hannity swipping in to be like, I'm going to tell you the story of this extremely small town. And it's person who's distributing garbage to the children.
00:50:34
Speaker
Real people like Sean Hannity care about it now. So, you know, it's big. That's right. Reminder, Sean Hannity, one of the producers of this movie, so, you know, it's understanding of what is real people is like very much influenced by his presence.
00:50:50
Speaker
We see that a little bit with a rumble streamer, I think, because The Rumble streamer for most of the movie is he doesn't do anything that's like sympathetic at all, but he's in the same business as Hannity. He's like kind of the same kind of person as Hannity.
00:51:07
Speaker
And so he kind of counts as a person, I think. Yeah, it's very funny.
Politics and Traditional Values
00:51:13
Speaker
So, ah yeah, so Nick is watching the Sean Hannity clip about him while he and his co-worker are like loading up garbage because now they're back to their regular garbage collection duties.
00:51:23
Speaker
And the co-worker realizes like, wait a minute, your jingle smells. Just like also very funny because it's like, OK, you know where the warehouse is.
00:51:35
Speaker
Who else could it have been? You know, it's not you. Like it took him this long to figure out who jingle smells was. And he's like, oh, you have to like keep delivering toys. But also, I can't believe you were got involved in stealing.
00:51:47
Speaker
and Nick is like, no, I need to sell a bunch of the toys because I need to make some money now. And he's just like, no, like that's totally against the Christmas spirit. like For this brief, beautiful moment, he says, okay, this is one another line that I wrote down.
00:51:58
Speaker
For one second, there wasn't any cancel or politics. And it's like, That's the understanding of this movie is that there's politics is this, right? The whole movie is so intensely ideological, right? But politics is this like thing like cancel culture that comes in and and invades, right?
00:52:17
Speaker
Politics is this like outside force that is like a disruptive of good Christian values. And then, you know, they get into a fight and he accidentally breaks Apostle Polly. And this is like a huge, you know, emotional moment for their, for their friendship, which,
00:52:32
Speaker
Well, it's supposed to be. Right. The movie wants us to think that like, okay, this is part of the emotional arc, but it's such an incoherent movie that... it kind of just isn't it's just kind of like oh you're like plastic trash broke ah it's so flat it's just like it happened and so now he's at his lowest point he's got this crossroads what is a good christian man to do he goes to church the whole church scene they really try to give it emotional weight and one of the things that they do that's kind of interesting is like there's no music the whole scene it's like a really like quiet somber scene
00:53:09
Speaker
Well, you're waiting for the intensity of the performances to sink in. So he walks in and the troubadour is in the pews. And i immediately wrote in my notes, troubadour is so obviously Santa.
00:53:21
Speaker
Yeah, like at this point, I was like, oh, this Santa character is like actually Santa. He's not just like a Santa-esque. but Because like, of course, because this movie doesn't do like symbolism. He just is Santa.
00:53:34
Speaker
So they have this like emotional conversation. I gotta say, this is the only funny scene in the movie to me. And the thing is, it's trying to be serious.
00:53:45
Speaker
Absolutely. This is the one scene where somebody really tries to commit to their lines. It's the lead actor. He's talking about how when he was overseas during the withdrawal, he saw women and children blown to pieces and listener gotta tell you it's fucking hilarious because he cannot act it's that bad you're just watching him just like pound his head into the material and nothing is happening there is a scene at the end of the first Rambo movie at the end of first blood where finally like Rambo's like handler basically gets to him
00:54:24
Speaker
and talks him down. And Rambo like starts off, you know Sylvester Stallone starts giving this monologue about how he came home and no one respects Vets. But then it kind of devolves into this monologue about this specific moment of like watching a friend of his die like in this ambush.
00:54:42
Speaker
And Sylvester Stallone kind of can't act. And it gets really incoherent. And he's having a breakdown. But the thing is... That one kind of works because the character is really having a breakdown and it's it's supposed to be incoherent. And so it works on certain emotional level.
00:54:57
Speaker
This scene is kind of trying to do that, but no one in this movie has any capacity for like actually having those kinds of emotional moments. And so it ends up just being so off-putting and bizarre and flat Because he's just like saying random words at random volumes. Like he'll just like start talking loud and then quiet. And it's like, it's like an attempt to do this like emotional thing, but it's just like, it's just random. Like he's just saying things randomly. okay It's you feel like you're having like an awkward personal experience with him.
00:55:30
Speaker
not with the character, the actor. Yeah, exactly. It's like, Oh, it's off-putting and it's awkward because this guy's having like real emotional trauma. It's like off-putting in the way that like a friend starts doing a joke. That's really not paying off. And you're like, Ooh, like this is a little uncomfortable.
00:55:50
Speaker
it like that kind of off-putting. It really doesn't work. And it's so funny. i also have in my notes, no triumphant return echoes of Vietnam. Yeah.
00:56:01
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, it's really trying to do. I mean, that's that's why I was also thinking about Rambo is because this is such a part of the imagination of like the because, you know, Vietnam is another war where like for a while and especially at the time, the kind of right wing story was like they didn't let us win. Right. In the second Rambo movie actually says, like, do we get to win this time?
00:56:23
Speaker
And that's what they're trying to say about like Biden's withdrawal from Afghanistan. Right. It's like exactly. Yeah. Yeah, so then this guy is Santa, and it's literally Santa. And actually, this whole scene, there's a like at some point, he goes, like oh, Santa is a symbol for giving, which is like a really funny line to say when you are literally Santa.
00:56:40
Speaker
And can we just talk about like how wild it is that there's a Santa in this movie? So like when all the kids, all the poor kids are like, oh, we haven't been visited by Santa and ever. Yeah.
00:56:52
Speaker
yeah It's like, what are you doing, man? Like this is the specific guy whose fault that is. The big conflict that he's having is there's a specific hospital where there are sick kids who are like need to be visited by Santa.
00:57:05
Speaker
And Like the Santa's not going to be able to visit. And and so Jingle Smells has to go and and visit them so that he can like give them the plastic trash that they're all like so desperate for because they're like poor, sick kids.
00:57:17
Speaker
Yeah. But then it turns out there's like an actual real fantasy Santa who could just like fly with magic to the hospital. And then, you know, he's like, oh, the the important thing is giving because really the thing you're giving is faith.
00:57:34
Speaker
That was insane. The purpose of charity in this movie, it makes it completely explicit. The purpose of charity is that it makes children Christian.
00:57:45
Speaker
Right. And in particular, like, it doesn't matter if it's a movie toy tie-in. It's funny because right one of the critiques I think we make of this conservative obsession with charity as the solution is that it doesn't actually it's not empowered to to fix structural problems, that it's not going to be able to fix things at the scale that they need to be fixed.
00:58:12
Speaker
And it leads to all these other you know it's not actually going to solve or widespread hunger or you know, any of these other ways people are deprived.
00:58:23
Speaker
But, you know, the Christian answer to this is, well, that's not the point of it. The point of the charity is to create faith, but that's sort of an equally incoherent thing because in the same way that it's like magical that, oh, individuals getting a charity would somehow fix these societal problems. It's equally magical that like me randomly giving a poor child, a plastic action figure is going to like turn him into a Christian.
00:58:46
Speaker
Like it just doesn't make any sense. Mm-hmm. Then Santa's elves show up. Yeah, but Santa's elves are like child laborers. They are. They're just like actual children in vaguely elfish costumes. And for reasons I can't really articulate, these children have unbelievably malevolent vibes.
00:59:07
Speaker
I found them incredibly creepy.
Bizarre Santa's Helpers
00:59:10
Speaker
It's because they just got like the kids are also like really bad actors, but in the way that like they just got some kids like I and i assume these are just like the producers kids or whatever, because but at this point, right, he's like, oh, my helpers have showed up or like my little helpers. And he's like, go wait in the car.
00:59:28
Speaker
And the kids are like, one of the kids is like, oh, you know, of course, like Santa gets all the credit, but we're the ones who do all the work, right? Like these are child laborers, first of all. And then second of all, right, this this this one boy is like, oh, Santa, we're waiting for you. I mean, grandpa, but like he doesn't sell the misdirect. So it's very clearly just like a kid reading a line off a cue card.
00:59:50
Speaker
And just like, it's so weird. Yeah. The vibe is so strange. They don't seem to be looking in the correct direction at any point in time. Yeah.
01:00:01
Speaker
I guess adults just have this instinctive, this instinctive understanding of like where to look according to the needs of the scene. I didn't even know that that was the case, but like these kids don't have it.
01:00:12
Speaker
Yeah, no, the kids are like, they just plop some kids down and they were like, say these words in this order. Like, that's why the vibe is so weird. Okay. So he's, he's been like rejuvenated by the spirit of Christmas and he's been convinced like, I don't need money.
01:00:27
Speaker
Right. I need to get, i need to to like, I need to bring back jingle smells, right? I need to like deliver toys to these kids. He gets the garbage bag full of toys that he has left and he like breaks into the hospital, but they just show him like running around the hospital and like belly crawling on the floor for no reason. Like there's no one else in the hospital.
01:00:47
Speaker
It's supposed to be comical. Yeah. It goes on for so long. It's this like, I mean, we say that maybe it only goes on for 30 seconds because everything in this movie feels like it lasts for 25 minutes at least. Right.
01:01:02
Speaker
Like, he's just like, there's just this long shot of him belly crawling down a hallway in a hospital. And i was like, wow, did we get here? Like, what oh, yeah, the movie is the movie is objectively not that long. Subjectively, he presses himself against every single surface in the fucking building.
01:01:19
Speaker
yeah Okay. okay Okay. his cop dad finds him and he's like about to enter the the specific room with the sick children in it.
01:01:29
Speaker
And the dad is like, oh, you're doing something illegal. Like there's like an arrest warrant out for you. Like all the cops are looking for you. It's like, and again what's worse is you gave me a bunch of money. you made me an accessory. And the guy goes, well, you know what they say, dad, some accessories are required, which like, that's not what they say.
01:01:47
Speaker
like no but That's not a saying? that's not a thing. As we get to the editor there's one more, you know what they say, that I also was just like, no, they don't say that. I don't think they say that.
01:02:01
Speaker
Okay, so his dad swallows his copness and lets him into the room with the sick children. And he distributes the toys, and the kids all sing the light. They're all like, oh my god, it's Jingle Smells. And then they sing the like Jingle Smells anthem that has become his like folk song anthem.
01:02:21
Speaker
They're totally enchanted with their pieces of shit and the guy who distributed them.
01:02:28
Speaker
And he leaves the room and there's a bunch more cops there. And so he gets arrested. Yeah. And he's like, I know you cops can't go in there and take the toys from the sick children because it would look bad for the toy company.
01:02:46
Speaker
It's fascinating to me how explicitly this movie understands police as just like tools of capital. Yeah. Like, yeah. Like why, why can't they go about their law enforcement duties? Well, because it would make the company look bad. Why do they give a fuck about the company about what would make the company look bad?
01:03:06
Speaker
Well, I don't know. It's just accepted. It's unexamined that they're, that they're really just agents of the company. And the delusion, of course, isn't that the cops would enforce the law. The part that's wrong is that the toy company would care about a bunch of poor, sick children having toys taken from them by cops. Right? like Like, it's so, it's so funny. So,
01:03:28
Speaker
Okay, but then the cops, I mean, even more to this point, right? The dad is like, well, you know, I'll, i'll you know, I'll call the lawyer and we'll, you know, I'll get you out of jail again, right? Not that the dad needed a lawyer last time, but... Right.
01:03:41
Speaker
The arresting cop says, take your time. He's not going to the jail right away. Cryptic. It kind of sounds like they're going to, you know, take him out back and shoot him in the back of the head.
01:03:53
Speaker
But what they do instead is they take him to the warehouse at the behest of the cash bro CEO. So like even more just like, yeah, cops are the servants of whatever the biggest CEO is. Right.
01:04:05
Speaker
i do you remember why the cash bro CEO wants him taken to the warehouse. I don't. This is something which the movie never really explains. I think the closest you could get to an explanation is that he wants to offer this guy the deal of, right? He he wants, like instead of having the guy be fully arrested and then have to go to trial and have to press charges, he wants to say, we won't press charges if you sign a statement, like, saying that you know you're wrong and also ask for the kids to return the toys.
01:04:38
Speaker
And like we'll replace and then the lawyer, the other lawyers like, oh, and we'll replace the toys with like my military monsters toys, which like, again, the joke is like those toys are shitty, but it's like I don't know why those toys are worse than these other toys. There's some shadow play here that I just don't understand.
01:04:55
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know. I mean, there this movie does have a theory of how wokeness operates within corporations. The idea is that these perpetual losers infest the corporate offices.
01:05:07
Speaker
They want to shove aside the good and promote themselves in their own inferior ideas. And so they use wokeness as a tool internally to do that. Yeah.
01:05:18
Speaker
So we get this really incoherent scene where they like want to like they're, they like threaten him by putting a bunch of the toys in the back of the garbage truck and then like flipping the switch that crushes the toys.
01:05:32
Speaker
And at first I thought like, Oh, they're threatening him that they're, they're going to like crush him because they're like, they're doing this really menacing, like, Oh, pull the lever. And I was like, Oh, this is a really weird turn. But no, I think it's just actually, they think he has some, I mean, I guess he does at this point have some like,
01:05:47
Speaker
totem attraction to these toys and so he would experience as like a physical threat like seeing the toys being crushed oh by the way all the movies characters essentially are gathered at the warehouse for one reason or another they're all telling the CEO like hey like don't do this they're offering Nick this deal like You won't go to jail if you just like denounce jingle smells and like ask the kids to return their toys.
01:06:13
Speaker
And Nick is like, no, like what message does that send about the spirit of Christmas? And like, I think it's one of the cops tells Nick stubbornness can be a strength, but not today, which is like very funny. if you Like, you know, it's a right wing movie. We got to make sure that we don't,
01:06:30
Speaker
hate on stubbornness. Like abstractly, stubbornness, that's good. We like that. Everybody's telling the CEO, oh no, like, you know, we support Jingle Smells, like a bunch of the kids are there.
01:06:42
Speaker
And then the CEO is like, oh, take him away. And then all of a sudden the cop is like, well, what if we don't want to? Right? Like suddenly the cop has a heart of gold. I really thought that the vizier who was standing suspiciously close to the garbage truck the whole time was going to end up getting crushed.
01:06:58
Speaker
Oh yeah, I definitely thought that was going to happen. But Mason Stone shows up and he gives this whole monologue about like, you know, I was canceled, whatever. But and he's telling this to the CEO of the toy company. What really hurts is that you turned your back on me.
01:07:13
Speaker
That's right. And Mason Stone makes a point of saying that Hollywood is not important. And that's something he'd learned through this whole cancellation. Yeah. Right. What I learned is that Hollywood doesn't matter, but you turned your back on me. But there's no implication before this that like they were friends, right? Like it's entirely a business relationship.
01:07:31
Speaker
The CEO goes, you know what? You're right. He says, I made an error. i listened to my lawyer. The CEO kind of gets consecutively bullied by everyone in this scene, like as if they all have personal relationships with him, really. And then the Mason Stone line is like the final one that cements his his willingness to turn on his vizier.
01:07:52
Speaker
And then you're they're like, oh, you know what? Let's arrest the lawyer instead. the lawyer's like, on what grounds? And the cops are like, we'll just make up a charge. Yeah. because like and been really funny in the leftist movie honestly the charge is just like being woke and soy right like yeah it's like the cops are finally like the charge is being exact yeah exactly So then everyone has a party in the warehouse for some reason. I guess they like ran out of location budgets and they were like, okay, we have to do one more scene. I guess we're all in the warehouse. Let's just have a party. The sound mixing is bad at basically every point in this movie, but for some reason, when it cuts to the scene, suddenly all the actors sound like they're eating the mic. It is so loud. It is really weird.
01:08:38
Speaker
Yeah, because they're like, I think they're recording live music inside this warehouse. And so then they're like, okay, we need to like get everyone's lines. They're like, who got the band? There's ah there's like a live band.
01:08:50
Speaker
Mason Stone is like, yeah, they're like, he's like, yeah, I brought in a band because you know what they say. Business in the front, party in the back. Mason Stone doesn't have a mullet. I don't understand what this line means.
01:09:03
Speaker
but Also, like, everyone is celebrating, but so, like, limply. Like, no one actually looks excited at all. Everyone is just, like, waving their arms around in this warehouse while a band does, like, a rock rendition of Jingle Smells.
01:09:17
Speaker
Like it's so... I checked. That is the Jay Sekulow band. Okay. Little aside on who Jay Sekulow is. So 1 million years ago, there was something called the first Trump administration.
01:09:31
Speaker
And in the first Trump administration, there were multiple attempts at impeaching the president. And the president hired his own personal lawyers in addition to the White House lawyers. And the chief lawyer for the first impeachment attempt was was Jay Sekulow.
01:09:49
Speaker
This is his band. so Oh my god! Jay Sekulow himself is a Jew for Jesus. If you don't know who the Jews for Jesus are, they are a Christian sect that uses Jewish aesthetics.
01:10:07
Speaker
It's a widespread opinion within the Jewish community that uses Jewish aesthetics, means appropriates Jewish aesthetics and falsely claims to be Jewish. But they are like pro-Jesus, pro-New Testament, all that kind of thing. This is cover of Jingle All the Way by a Christian Zionist band. That is fascinating.
01:10:31
Speaker
but It's terrible. My notes are maybe a little overwritten. I wrote here harmless, but unpleasantly bland, smooth, chalky, the sound of a condom full of Pepto Bismol bursting in your gut.
01:10:43
Speaker
but That is what it sounds like. Okay.
Irony in Cancel Culture
01:10:47
Speaker
Then Mason Stone gets a call. He's uncanceled, which like is also funny because basically in the movie where cancel culture is real, the the twist ending is that cancel culture is fake.
01:11:00
Speaker
like The CEO of a toy company just saying, never mind, is enough to uncancel him. He goes outside and the shrieking activist has returned and immediately freaks out and starts yelling at him, but then like runs up to him and hugs him. She kind of starts going in on her shtick, but then like she's immediately so sexually stimulated and overwhelmed by his presence that instead she just like comes up and embraces him.
01:11:31
Speaker
Yeah, it's so misogynistic. It's really disgusting. Like she's a classic like Randy and hater, right? Because what this implies is that like she really just hated him because he's so cool and sexy, right? Like this is exactly the classic Rams like hatred of the good thing. Like, oh my God.
01:11:50
Speaker
And so then we get the ending of the movie, which is The Return of Sean Hannity, explaining that we finally got closure on who Jinglesmells is, and he's actually a vet, and he's a brave worrier against cancel culture, who stood up to the big toy industrial complex.
01:12:12
Speaker
And that's like the end. That's the end of the movie. No, no, there is more. There's a critical final scene, which is- Oh my god, you're right. Okay, yeah, you're right. There's more repeat. Nick is continuing in his work as a garbage man.
01:12:26
Speaker
By the way, the name of the company is Valor Garbage or something like that.
Rejecting the Screenwriter's Call
01:12:30
Speaker
I i assume that everyone they hire is a vet, kind of the thing. And he's about to start in on his work, but he's he's got to take a phone call first, and he blows off a screenwriter who wants to adapt his story because guess what? Nick has also learned that Hollywood is not that important.
01:12:51
Speaker
The writer is like, oh, this is your big break. This is your big break. Like, this is your moment, right? You're going to be a star. And he's like, sorry, i don't have time for that woke crap. things up the phone I've got too much real man shit to do. Like giving trash to kids.
01:13:07
Speaker
Yeah. He hops in the garbage truck. His co-worker is in there with him. The little Christian figure has been repaired. His co-worker is like, oh, I've got an even more important figure that I take with me on my work now. And he puts into the cup holder Mason Stone as Jingle
Santa and Jesus Blurred Lines
01:13:28
Speaker
Smells. It's a new action figure. Right, because actually the thing that I didn't say is that the new Mason Stone movie...
01:13:35
Speaker
is the Jingle Smells movie. Like, the end of Jingle Smells is that the company is that they make Jingle Smells into a movie. Which raises the question of, like, what the fuck the screenwriter was talking about. Right. Put that aside.
01:13:50
Speaker
Yeah. It's, like, it's so weird. But it is the Jingle Smells movie. We get, like, a little trailer of that. so So Mason Stone is going to play Jingle Smells. So then they have the Mason Stone Jingle Smells action figure, and that's kind of the last thing. And then and then the movie ends.
01:14:04
Speaker
Oh, my God. I'm fascinated by, I think this is by far the most interesting part of the movie, is this last scene. Because he explicitly says, like oh, I've got something even more important than the Christ figure in my life. And then he puts that fucking Jingle Smells action figure up right there next to the symbol of the cross and drives off.
01:14:26
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I think there's a couple things in this theme, right? Like, so I said the beginning, like, oh, he's Nick and he's like Saint Nick, like he's a Santa figure. And this is one of the things that is sort of unclear to me or, you know, has always been unclear to me about Christian, this like Christian imaginary, which is like, who is Santa?
01:14:46
Speaker
Right? Like, how is Santa? Right? Like, Christmas is about the the birth of Jesus. Okay. Yeah. what is Santa? And it's like clear, right? It's like, there's this like, it's a syncretic thing from these pagan traditions and these other, right?
01:15:02
Speaker
It doesn't really figure into like the story of Jesus or whatever. Well, the movie kinds of melds those figures because Nick right is pretty clearly Santa, but he's also a bit Jesus. We see that
Production and Key Figures
01:15:16
Speaker
in the final scene, but I think we also see that in the trial because i don't know, I was looking at that scene and I was thinking, oh, the CEO here is like Pontius Pilate.
01:15:24
Speaker
This is the crowd being asked to choose between Jesus and Barris, but like this time they get it right. They choose the Jesus figure. Yeah. I think this time you might be a little more charitable than this movie really deserves. I don't know if that... I'm not saying this is intentional.
01:15:41
Speaker
Okay. But there's also the part in the in the church scene... there is a there is a part where they're talking exactly about, right? This is where a lot of this question of like, is it okay to steal from the garbage kind of gets hashed out?
01:15:54
Speaker
And Santa explains like, well, yeah, it depends. Like, what are you stealing for? Like, are you stealing to like give it to kids? Because like that makes it okay. And like, even if you were selling it, like, and actually Santa explicitly says like,
01:16:05
Speaker
if you were stealing it and then making money off of it, but then you were using that money to help the kids, like that would also be okay. And so so a character in the movie does actually point out like, Hey, you could make a lot of money with these and then also still help the kids, but in a much more substantial way than giving them action figures.
01:16:23
Speaker
But that's kind of what, what put aside, but there is this moment of like, Oh, you know, it's illegal, but like, you know, who else did stuff that, or you know, who else was accused of of doing stuff that was illegal?
01:16:35
Speaker
Jesus. just like And so there is this explicit comparison of Jingle Smells and Jesus in this movie. I need to dump a little more Jay Sekulow lore on you.
01:16:46
Speaker
Okay. So Jay Sekulow is the chief counsel for something called the American Center for Law and Justice. He has been since 1991.
01:16:57
Speaker
They were producers on this movie. Exactly. This whole movie is an American Center for Law and Justice project.
Cultural War in Children's Media
01:17:06
Speaker
Almost all the people involved in the production are like ah scions of of this legal group.
01:17:14
Speaker
For example, guess who the director is? Oh my God. Yeah. It's literally secular son, Logan secular. That's Oh my God.
01:17:25
Speaker
What? Guess what? Like secular religious affiliation is. Is he a Jew for Jesus? Okay. Check out the, check out the tweet. I just sent you. This is incredible.
01:17:36
Speaker
Like, yeah, he's a Jew for Jesus. Yeah. Describe what you're looking at Yeah. This is a tweet, which is it's ah it's a, it's screenshot of the Rugrats Hanukkah special.
01:17:52
Speaker
where Tommy Pickles is of the Maccabees holding like a shield, right? Like, like he's a, you know, one of these Jewish warriors and he's saying Macca baby's got what a Macca baby's got to And then the caption that Logan has given is, are you watching or are you blinded by hate?
01:18:12
Speaker
Happy Hanukkah, shine bright in the darkest of nights. Okay. Again, Jews for Jesus. not Jewish. i don't know what are you watching could be referring to other than the Rugrats Hanukkah special. Like, is this just like, what does he think we should be watching? I don't know. i think maybe he's saying that you got to go watch the Rugrats comedy special. If you're not blinded by hate, those are the two options.
01:18:40
Speaker
Again, we come back to search for the black and white thinking. I think there's this thing, which We haven't seen really in any of the things we've looked at. And I think partly because we've looked at older stuff and I think it, it's specific instantiation. I think it's a newer phenomenon, but that I want to somehow be able to talk about, which is because I think it's a broader spectrum than just right wing.
01:19:01
Speaker
this obsession with children's media as like the locus of the culture war. Like, you know, on the one hand, right, it's if if this movie about Christmas and it's about the Christmas presents and whatever, like, okay, then it's about toys.
01:19:15
Speaker
But it's totally wild that this movie was about toys and about a toy company, but it's not really a kid's movie.
01:19:25
Speaker
It's a movie you can, in principle, watch while your children are in the room. Right. And so I can't think of many other movies. like It's weird for a movie that's for adults to be about toys and a toy company on some level, but maybe not because maybe actually… this is where the culture war is fought is like children's media.
01:19:47
Speaker
Like you got to show your allegiance by consuming the Rugrats Hanukkah special. I don't know. Like I watched the Rugrats Hanukkah special a lot when I was a kid, you know, as a young Jewish kid, like it's good.
01:19:59
Speaker
And if, you know, i haven't watched it in years because it's, it's not because I'm blinded by hate. It's because I'm blinded by being 30 years old. I don't need to watch the Rugrats on, like, a special, right?
01:20:15
Speaker
When we see like trying to ban kid books, et cetera, et cetera, like a part of it is like, okay, we want to make sure that we are controlling the the world that is being presented to children, right?
Missing Anti-LGBT Messaging
01:20:25
Speaker
Like there's a reason why, you know, the books that are the most targeted by all these banning campaigns are like the ones where it's like a book for kids about what does it mean to be queer? What does it mean to be trans that like might help kids like sort that out for themselves? Yeah.
01:20:38
Speaker
that makes sense to me as like a locus of culture war. There's like a theory of power there that is like bad but coherent on some level. But there's like a certain level on which like it's fascinating to me that it's the Rugrats special that this guy is tweeting, you know?
01:20:51
Speaker
mean, I was genuinely fascinated that there was no anti-LGBT messaging in this movie. That really struck me. that It just doesn't come up.
01:21:03
Speaker
These people are just not imagining that gay people exist, right? And so part of the Christmas fantasy of this movie is that like this is a small town in real America. Politics is something, right? Cancel culture is something that is invading from the outside. So if like a gay person were to show up, it couldn't be someone who lived in the town, right? Because this is real America.
01:21:20
Speaker
Right. You would have to have maybe, I don't know, the Hollywood screenwriter on on screen and they have a limp wrist or something. Exactly. Right. Like it would have to be something like that or like, right. Cause then the guy couldn't say for one second, there was no cancel or politics because there would be politics in the form of a gay person.
01:21:38
Speaker
That's right. They would continue existing. That's quite political. God, what a weird movie. Why did we watch this? Helen, what you're asking me? This is your fault.
01:21:49
Speaker
It is my fault. I wanted us to have a Christmas special. I wanted to i wanted to i wanted to celebrate the the holiday spirit a little bit, you know? I fired up X Cancel and I looked at every single tweet that mentioned this movie.
01:22:02
Speaker
which didn't take that long because there were only four. Metacritic does not list this movie. Rotten Tomatoes does, but it only has one review, which is a 4.5 out of 5 from the Epoch Times, which is the propaganda outlet of the far-right Chinese cult, Falun Gong.
01:22:22
Speaker
That's so incredible. They basically recap the movie and they were like, yeah, this is good. This is witty. Yeah.
01:22:31
Speaker
Epoch Times Film Critic would be a really good, like, novelty Twitter account name. Like, how cooked does your brain have to be? Like, because you actually, like, do you think they watch the movies?
01:22:42
Speaker
Or you think they get like chat GPT to summarize the movie and then they just say like five stars? Okay. I mean, first off, this came out in 2023. Second, the review was like far too accurate and idiosyncratically written and for it to be chat GPT.
01:22:58
Speaker
I desperately want to meet the like Epoch Times film critic. ah and Shoot him an email. i but I bet they have some time to talk. Yeah. do you Do you think he'd come on the pod? We can try. Maybe for our next movie. I did sign some other reviews that weren't listed on Rotten Tomatoes. like The Guardian reviewed this, but you know on the whole, and just kind of Landed with a thud, for sure. I checked Letterboxd, and it basically seems like everyone on Letterboxd who's reviewed it is reviewing it because they saw... This is when I learned that it was like just last week a YouTuber released a video, which is I think why it showed up in search results.
Nihilism vs. Christian Values
01:23:38
Speaker
But like everyone has been watching this like leftist YouTuber who made a video about it or whatever. I also found a a far-right entertainment news site, which had what it billed as an interview with Victoria Jackson, which I'm not sure I would actually describe it as an interview, but there's a few quotes from her.
01:24:01
Speaker
And she's the one who plays the enraged liberal woman. So maybe you could check this excerpt out. The film casts Jackson as a progressive snowflake raging against the actor's opinions while fellow SNL alum brewer plays a news anchor sharing the latest updates.
01:24:20
Speaker
The comic behind the goat boy character has dared to question the COVID-19 narratives, drawing fury from the progressive left. Jackson jumped at the chance to mock the woke mindset, and she hoped to improvise some of her lines on set.
01:24:37
Speaker
Except she says she couldn't make it funnier than the script in the hand. So she stuck to the plan. like, I cannot emphasize enough how not jokes the script in hand was like, it was such a, like the things she's saying are just like incoherent and then shrieking.
01:24:57
Speaker
The cancel culture subplot speaks to Jackson, who likely has lost work for her unabashedly conservative views and aggressive takedowns of former President Barack Obama. She hopes that what Elon Musk dubbed the woke mind virus is abating.
01:25:11
Speaker
I think things are starting to thaw and the pendulum swings back and forth, she says before striking a more serious note. I also, oh my God. I also believe in the second law of thermodynamics. The world is in a state of entropy. I do expect things to always be getting worse.
01:25:32
Speaker
Oh my God. These people's brains are so cooked. Like what is it? What is happening? Yeah. It's like a fried egg in there. That actually reminds me of another thing we kind of brushed over in the church scene where he meets real Santa. Because we were so hung up on the fact that it's like there's an actual Santa and that totally like completely reorients the entire movie because you have to like recontextualize everything that's happened with the fact that there is a real Santa who like can just magically travel around the world. And yet he hangs out in this like small town in New Mexico playing guitar in a cafe like...
01:26:03
Speaker
the whole time. During this like incoherent attempt at emotion from from Nick, where he's like oh yeah he's explaining that he has like huge survivor's guilt because he's watched some of his like fellow war buddies and then also his women and children being blown up.
01:26:21
Speaker
And this whole thing is super traumatic. And then you come home and you like, how are you supposed to, you know, move on and do something and not just constantly be thinking about these horrors you've witnessed?
01:26:32
Speaker
Santa literally goes like, well, what are you going to do That's life. And it's like the same thing here. Like, yeah, it's the second law of thermodynamics. Like people are, it's like, things always get worse. It's like, what?
01:26:43
Speaker
Like, it's such a nihilist view of the world, right? Like what could be less like faith in Christian values than? Yeah. Everything is just going to get shittier no matter what. It's a law of the universe.
01:26:58
Speaker
How is that? The spirit of Christmas. That's not the spirit of Christmas.
Culture War Chaos
01:27:01
Speaker
This movie sucked so bad. Yeah, I'm not a fan. and Maybe we should all just go watch the Rugrats Hanukkah special.
01:27:08
Speaker
It's much better. It's pretty fun. Okay, that's our that's our official recommendation for Christmas. In all honesty, I don't even know if I want to do FHE ratings. I'm just disgusted. i feel dirty having watched this. Yeah, this was really bad.
01:27:24
Speaker
Quinn and I started watching it together, but then she just fell asleep. And I was like, I can't wake her up to like make her what to make her watch Jingle Smells. God, what a bad movie. ah All right. No rating.
01:27:37
Speaker
Movie sucks. Yeah. It's kiss I found it like illuminating to me, at least towards like, what is the current state of like the war on Christmas? Right. Like where, where's the, what does the conservative mind think is happening like in the war on Christmas? Right. And so of course,
01:27:58
Speaker
woke is a war on Christmas and the war on Christmas is about woke. These things are really tied. And so it's kind of perfect. Like, that's why I was like, we have to watch this because when I found this movie, I was like, yeah, this is like Santa Jesus garbage man, like bravely takes a stand against woke cancel culture war on Christmas.
01:28:15
Speaker
It's just everything that's like been in the culture war, just like poured into this big soup of an incoherent movie. and think it won't
Podcast Reflection and Regret
01:28:22
Speaker
be long before these movies are just AI generated because this movie almost could be ai generated like that's how badly made it is and so i want to you know just take a moment of like respect for the craft that at least real people made this yeah these are the dying moments of the film industry potentially yeah like in the next version right in the jingle smells reboot in 2027 like nick is gonna have like an inconsistent number of fingers from shot to shot and like
01:28:51
Speaker
you know And so it's nice to appreciate you know something something handmade like this. I also found this movie illuminating in the sense that it really put a spotlight on what my life was.
01:29:05
Speaker
was transcribing my notes at 2.15 a.m. was like, what the fuck is this? What am I up to? I shouldn't be watching Jingle Spells right now or working on hodcast episode about it.
01:29:19
Speaker
Thanks, Ellen. That's what I got out of it. I'm sorry that I gave you like existential dread for Christmas.
01:29:27
Speaker
Oh my god. Well, i don't know why we made this, so Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to our non-Christian listeners. Stay woke.
01:29:38
Speaker
Wait, wait, will wait, wait. Check out our Patreon. Patreon.com slash odmsymposium. You can subscribe and get episodes early and get a shout out on the podcast.
01:29:49
Speaker
And ideally, we would like it to make sense to do lots of other episodes in the future. And if we do more bonus episodes, they will hopefully be better than this one.
01:30:00
Speaker
We're not going to watch movies like this. I don't know why we did this. But yeah, check us out on Patreon. I'm
Final Promotions and Endorsements
01:30:06
Speaker
putting all the blame on you, Helen. I should have watched the trailer. I should have watched the trailer. Oh my god, all of this could have been avoided.
01:30:14
Speaker
There's really nothing real. There is no real. And that's what's called the postmodern mentality. I couldn't repeat the word racist remark. The adventure of life justifies its suffering. I don't want to see him having political succubus with goblins. Do it Do it live! Now listen, you could be a calling name in your goddamn face. You'll save plastered. I was going to have a guest speaker, but the person I had invited in died.
01:30:48
Speaker
Hey, don't often do these, but... If you're looking for a Christmas film and you're wondering why I'm vibrating, two answers. One, I'm on my vibration exercise plate. And Jingle Smells.
01:31:00
Speaker
This is the second year it's been out, but my goodness, Victoria Jackson and Jim Brewer from SNL are in it, John Schneider from Dukes of Hazzard, and Eric Roberts from pretty much everything. Check it out.
01:31:12
Speaker
We produced it with the Seculo family and Sean Hannity. I'll put the link in bio. That's what Noah told me to say, so that's what we'll do. Check it out, Jiggle Smells.