Watched: 11/24/2024
Format: Netflix
Viewing: First
Director: Jerry Ciccoritti
Selection: Jamie
Every Christmas, we're inundated not just with Hallmark-style Christmas films - we also get a few comedies, many which that involve some straight up magic as the premise. After all, it is Christmas, and Christmas includes Heat Misers and flying reindeer and Mariah Carey.
But those Christmas comedies are not always winners. Last year, I nominated two magical Christmas comedies for some of the worst films I'd seen all year. Those included Genie and my selection for worst of 2023, Candy Cane Lane. So I am not just easily in the bag for anything that comes along, Christmas-wise. (I do remember liking parts of Dashing Through the Snow, but that may have just been Teyonah Parris smiling on screen).
Mostly, this movie made me happy for Lacey Chabert, who accidentally fell backward into being the second-most-popular Hallmark star, and then was promoted to full-Hallmark status when Candace Cameron Bure decided Hallmark was now too woke for her.*
Chabert had been kind of pushing the envelope at Hallmark the last few years, finding movies that didn't exactly fit the Hallmark mold as we knew it. Haul Out the Holly, por ejemplo, was an attempt to just do a plain 'ol family comedy. It even has Gen X's favorite Ned, Stephen Tobolowsky.
Hot Frosty (2024) is a leap into a straight, goofy comedy, as evidenced by some of the casting, from Schitt's Creek's Dustin Milligan to Katy Mixon Greer, who I particularly loved in Eastbound and Down. I also was delighted to see Lauren Holly show up (and she was really funny, as pre-usual). And, lastly, if you don't know Craig Robinson and Joe Lo Truligio, well... your life is a poor shell of an existence and I pity you.
The basic set-up is that a woman, who has been struggling since the death of her husband, accidentally brings a snow-sculpture of a hot dude to life by placing a magical scarf around the snowman's neck.
This is the joke/ plot. He's a living snow man with abs upon abs. He's a good looking dude who knows nothing because he's a snow man, but he's the embodiment of both PMA and TCB**. It's an excuse for everyone but Chabert to be goofy as they react to "Jack" the snow man, whether it's as a horned-up Lauren Holly stumbling across Jack, or as Craig Robinson in his Ahab-like quest to catch a streaker, which is not something anyone but him cares about in the slightest (that's the joke).
Plenty of gags occur as Jack wants to be in cold places and consume ice.
Yes, of course, Chabert and Jack fall in love by the film's end, and she saves him from melting with a kiss (spoilers, but... come on). And the whole town comes together, because you doesn't like a golden retriever of a human or snow man?
I am not here to explain why comedy works, and everyone has different sensibilities. This is fine. Critics on Metacritic came in right down the middle with a 52, but twice as many positive reviews as negative. I think this feels accurate. RT tells a very RT picture. With 23 Critics reviews in, Hot Frosty is sitting at an 86% "fresh". And, yet!, 250 audience reactions in have landed the movie at a 56% audience rating.
What's hilarious is that the negative reviews on RT seem to be Hallmark enthusiasts confused about what they're watching on one hand. On the other, boyfriends who are mad that they had to watch this movie, thinking this is a Hallmark movie, and likely mad about Jack's abs and their girlfriend tittering at that. And it all horseshoes back to angry people giving the movie 1 star for completely different reasons.
Mostly, the movie is just a goofy, holiday-themed hang. It's a sitcom. You know, where the situation allows for comedy. Do people not understand how this works? Maybe not. Certainly not the Hallmark audience, if the bad reviews are any indication. "It's stupid" is maybe my favorite criticism, because, friend, you chose to watch a movie called "Hot Frosty" about a snowman who comes to life by way of a scarf, and they did not hide who was in this.
Anyway, I won't go all in about this, but I liked it just fine as a 90 minute joke excuse. And that is not my history with movies like Genie and Candy Cane Lane.
Here - I chuckled. I larfed, even. Yes, I get delighted when Craig Robinson's keyboard shows up. Anything Lo Truglio does is worth a watch. Yes, I want to see Lauren Holly*** gaping at Jack. I assume many people also want to gape at Jack. I want to see Lacey Chabert get a chance to do something other than save a Christmas Tree farm. And Dustin Milligan is funny! America - hire this Canadian.
*CCB got so huffy she went and started a whole new network from where she could make movies with white, straight people doing the same things they'd been doing in Hallmark movies since the 00's. And, you know what...? good for CCB. Have your network. Let Hallmark do their thing, you do yours.
**Positive Mental Attitude and Taking Care of Business
***look, I probably went in too much on Lauren Holly. She's barely in the movie, but she seemed like a very, very good idea to 1990's me, and I liked seeing her again.
2 comments:
I actually was on board for the stupid. I like when movies appear to keep the same title they used at the pitch meeting, like Cocaine Bear. I just didn’t think they did enough with the premise. Guy from Schitt’s Creek is fine. Mean Girls girl is fine. Everyone is… fine. I guess I just wanted more. More goofiness? Or a musical number maybe? I don’t know. I was just done with it at about the halfway mark. But I concede it is not terrible.
yeah, I think you were hoping for a budget this movie did not have. My suspicion is they spent what money they had on a few people who were going to riff and make this marginally better than the script. Your musical number was Craig Robinson on keyboards and is the inter-credits sequence. You missed nothing by tapping out. You saw the joke - it was more of that. I'm estimating they doubled the budget for a typical "A Prince for Christmas" and this is what we got.
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