The true meaning of Christmas, desperate last-minute shopping, is the subject of this holiday-themed comedy. Howard Langston (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is a mattress salesman with a bad habit of putting his work ahead of his family. His son, Jamie (Jake Lloyd), who wishes he would pay more attention to him, wants only one thing for Christmas — a Turbo Man action figure with all the accessories. He promises his wife, Liz (Rita Wilson), and Jamie that there will indeed be one under the tree on Christmas morning. But on Christmas Eve, he realizes that he hasn't actually bought it yet. Seemingly it wouldn't be a great problem to head on down to the toy store and do so, but it just so happens that Turbo Man has been the hottest ticket of the holiday season, and literally thousands of parents are scrambling for the last few figures. Howard then spends a hilariously hellish day madly scrambling from store to store in desperate search of a Turbo Man. In the course of his adventures, he keeps crossing paths with Myron Larrabee (Sinbad), a postal worker who wants to get one for his son even more desperately than Howard. And on the home front, he has to worry about his next-door neighbor, Ted Maltin (Phil Hartman), an annoyingly perfect suburbanite obsessed with Christmas who has eyes for Liz.