Despite its reputation for being rife with chaos, Black Friday hasn’t been the focus of all that many movies over the years. Some people naturally think of the 1996 Arnold Schwarzenegger comedy Jingle All the Way as the ultimate representation of onscreen shopping madness, but the film actually takes place on Christmas Eve. The 2021 Jason Statham thriller Wrath of Man features a heist that occurs on Black Friday, though it has nothing to do with the kind of shopping frenzies the day’s become known for. Eli Roth’s 2023 slasher Thanksgiving opens with a crazy Black Friday-related shopping scene; however, even that plays out the day before Black Friday (otherwise known as Thanksgiving).
Truth be told, even if you counted every single one of those as Black Friday movies, in terms of box office success, they still wouldn’t come close to Paul Blart: Mall Cop. The 2009 comedy stars Kevin James as a clumsy mall security guard with dreams of becoming a police officer. James, in the titular role, finally gets to show off his abilities on Black Friday when a group of criminals shut down the mall during an attempted heist and take hostages, including his daughter. Blart single-handedly thwarts their plans and manages to save the day, John McClane-style.
To say the movie was not well-received is an understatement. A lot of critics dismissed it at the time, and probably still do. It was called a “laugh-free farce,” and a “one-note joke comedy.” The Rotten Tomatoes score currently sits at 34% all these years later, and the audience score is only slightly higher at 43%.
Yet and still, Paul Blart was an absolute box office smash when it first came out 16 years ago. It raked in nearly $186 million worldwide on a $26 million budget. For comparison, Jingle All the Way made just under $130 million worldwide, which is still only about $155 million when adjusted for inflation—and as we already pointed out, that’s not even a Black Friday movie.
So, which Black Friday-themed movie is anywhere near Paul Blart as far as numbers are concerned? The short answer is…seemingly none. Unless we’re overlooking something, and we’re pretty sure that we aren’t, Kevin James’s goofy rent-a-cop comedy looms large over any and all films in the Black Friday niche—or at least for the time being, it does.
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