movie review
HOT FROSTY
Running time: 92 minutes. Rated: TV-PG. On Netflix.
After being brought to life, the sexy snowman of Netflix’s “Hot Frosty” can laugh and play just the same as you and me — except a million times dumber.
Named Jack (Dustin Milligan from “Schitt’s Creek”), this holiday rom-com doofus makes Buddy the Elf look like an astrophysicist.
Our own intelligence goes on extended holiday as the idiot hunk of ice bakes pizzas, gets a makeover and attends an Upstate New York high-school dance with conspicuously complex choreography.
Before I plow this nonsense, I’ll grant that it’s an ingenious marketing ploy by the streamer. The gist, “Frosty the Snowman” with abs, makes for a hilarious talker. And the title sounds like a 1998 porno VHS. “Hot Frosty” is causing more of a stir than “Gladiator II” is — and was Netflix’s most-watched movie of the week.
But, bah humbug, the actual film directed by Jerry Ciccoritti is nowhere near as fun or steamy as its cheeky premise would suggest. No bow-chika-wow-wow here. Or much humor either. It’s as wholesome as hopscotch. The treacly trifle is just more of the same Hallmark-inspired Christmas white noise for people who defend these terrible, sappy movies as chicken soup for the couch potato’s soul.
Kathy (Lacey Chabert) is already smitten with Jack when he’s still an inanimate object in fictional Hope Springs, NY’s snow sculpture competition. Absurdly well-crafted, he’s the Michelangelo’s David of snowmen.
“You’ve been doing your pushups,” she coos at the literally chiseled adonis.
Flirting with flakes, Kathy accidentally enchants the statue with her magical scarf, and by morning, he’s flesh and blood. And hopelessly blank.
Stupid Jack proclaims, “I love talking! It’s amazing!”
He then excitedly explains to the shocked Kathy, an overworked diner owner, what has occurred: “I was made of snow, and now I’m made of… not snow! Can you believe it?!”
At first, she can’t. “He’s a grifter with memory loss,” the skeptic insists to her doctor friend Dottie.
All the while, Jack, basically a Golden Retriever, keeps telling confused Kathy, “I love you!”
But not everybody loves him. On Day One, Mr. Freeze is already the enemy of the fuzz. Jack stole some clothes — sorry, ladies! — from a local store, and the bumbling, “hard on crime!” sheriff and his deputy work to hunt down the culprit.
Kathy, who holds a special place in her heart for attractive morons with the IQ of a carrot nose, protects Jack at her crumbling house.
He’s handed ho-hum, fish-out-of-water gags as he plays fixer-upper. “What is this?!,” Jack says of the remote control. Snooze. After being frightened by a horror program on TV, he scours the basement for vampires.
Each new idea is worse than the last. And there’s nothing particularly snowman-y about Jack except he can’t get too warm or he’ll die, and he snacks on ice cubes.
The pair get closer and a romance starts to bloom, which is weird because Jack has the mind of a toddler. And vulnerable Kathy is a widow whose husband only recently died.
“What is cancer?,” wide-eyed Jack asks in a bonkers moment.
“It’s not a nice thing that happens to some people,” Kathy replies.
At the end of the film, she kisses this imbecile.
The town starts to fall for him, too — especially the lusty local women who are awestruck when they spot the hottie doing chores outdoors shirtless.
After one drooling ogler drives her car off the road, Jack says the only purposefully funny line in the entire movie: “Want me to get behind you and push?”
The sleepy rest of “Hot Frosty” is Jack helping to put on the local school dance, because they’re short on teachers apparently. Work closely with our kids, you shirtless stranger with no last name!
The sentimental ending, where the town has to band together to bail Jack out of jail, left me totally cold. That’s good for Jack, bad for a Christmastime romantic comedy.
Netflix’s tagline for this schlock is “It took a snowman to melt her heart.”
Yes, and my brain.
