#112 (S)No(w)man is a Failure Who Has Friends
26/11/24 08:09
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good physique and a sweet disposition must be… a snowman.
This is the improbable and excellent premise of 2024’s top Christmas movie offering, the aptly, magnificently titled HOT FROSTY. Before we go on, let’s take a moment to really savour that, shall we? Let us walk around it admiringly, running a caressing hand along the curves of those seductively repeated vowels, stopping to appreciate the wondrous sibilance of that second word, which should be an adjective but we know – we know – is a noun. A proper noun. ‘HOT’: like your laptop after you’ve watched three eps of Emily in Paris on the trot. ‘FROSTY’: like the receptionist at work when you forgot your pass again. NO. Not like that. It’s ‘Hot’, like the priest or rabbi you can’t have because God gets in the way. And ‘Frosty’, like The Snowman. But a sexy version. HOT FROSTY - a SILF. Frankly, it felt like all my Christmases had come at once. So I lit my fairy lights (that’s not a euphemism, though on reflection, maybe it is), poured myself a little glass of something, and with a saucy look to camera, fired up Netflix.
We’re in Hope Springs, because of course we are, snow is falling from a blue sky and Kathy is waking in a cold, broken home, because her husband died of cancer and he did the handy stuff around the house. It’s essential for a love interest to have a tragic past in a Christmas romcom – usually it’s the man who’s a doting single father and sad widower, but in this instance it’s the woman who’s loved and lost, though she doesn’t have a child because that would make things messy. Kathy is a waitress, because of course she is – it’s a convenient profession to demonstrate her hardworking nature and familiarity with everyone in her home town. After a tiring day at the culinary coalface, she wanders through Hope Springs’ snow sculpting competition displays and pauses in front of a Snow-Adonis. A Snowdonis? He’s fit AF, but, you know, he’s also a glacial effigy so not really a romantic prospect. OR IS HE? Kathy puts her scarf around him in a pointlessly compassionate gesture, and somehow that’s the only spark of magic ‘Frosty’ needs to firm him up. In the blink of an eye, he’s gone from ice to niiiiice, running round town completely starkers, biceps bulging like the vocal sac of a bullfrog. It’s Olaf meets… He-Man.
After accidentally breaking and entering the local second-hand store, Hope Springs’ newest resident purposely steals some clothes to make himself decent, and is then discovered by Kathy telling his frozen sculpture friends all about his adventures. Rather than march him to the nearest institution, Kathy lets ‘Jack’ move in with her, despite being understandably resistant to the notion that he is, in fact, a vaguely sentient pile of slush. Innocent of human ways, Jack is naturally rather… I suppose ‘childlike’ is the most benign way of putting it. A great big man-baby, is another way. This newborn dude, who used to be made of white powder, is a bit of a div. But he’s also a quick learner, and watching Kathy’s telly all day teaches him all sorts of things, just like E.T.
It’s important to note that Hot Frosty pays dogged homage to various other filmic oeuvres. Jack being a kid at heart harks back to Tom Hanks’ Big, which in retrospect also had a pretty dodgy romantic premise. Or the other Tom Hanks film Splash, if you replace the whole half-man-half-snow with half-woman-half-fish. Hope Springs appears to be filmed on the set of Back to the Future, and towards the end of the story, the producers have a wildly ambitious stab at It’s a Wonderful Life, which falls sadly, wonderfully flat. More of that anon – something to look forward to!
So, with these Crimbo-coms, the Yule-rules state that there has to be a stupid sub-plot and in this blizzard of bollocks, it’s the local Sheriff becoming obsessed with which dastardly villain broke into Reclaimed Rags, gradually zoning in on recently-rolled-into-the-region Jack Frosty. Our plucky snow-child’s wide-eyed new life as Hope Spring’s resident handyman, eye-candy for the middle-aged, and Kathy’s devoted lodger is under threat. Oh, and also whenever he goes inside for prolonged periods, he starts to melt, what with him being some sort of amiable yeti.
Kathy’s heart is cold after her husband Paul died, but Jack warms it up with his peculiar brand of ardent, say-what-you-feel openness, manual dexterity, and those great big guns that pop whenever he does anything handy or helpful, which is all the time. It was at this point that I started to see what they were getting at, message-wise, with this movie, and the screenwriter obligingly articulates it when one of the townsfolk explains to Kathy why it’s easy for them to believe the far-fetched explanation of Jack’s true background. A man like that - gorgeous, guileless, kind, useful; there’s got to be magic involved. Anyone that hot MUST be frosty, i.e. he’s definitely a snowman, because he’s a unicorn.
All Hope Springs’ citizens are remarkably sanguine about Jack’s true identity: ‘yeah, why not’ being the overwhelming response. Plus he’s a popular chap, so when Sheriff Nate locks him up in a stuffy jail cell in the mistaken belief that he’s an international terrorist (Jack has no fingerprints, and let’s be honest, ‘terrorist’ is less of a leap than ‘snowman’), everyone gathers outside to demand Frosty’s release before all that’s left of him is a puddle. Kathy’s short on bail money, therefore one and all put their hands in their pockets to contribute, and shame the Sheriff into submission. It’s about as far from Bedford Falls coming to George Bailey’s rescue as ‘Walking in the Air’ sung by Aled Jones is from ‘Baby Got Back’ rapped by Sir Mix-a-Lot.
Tragically (though, it must be said, not as tragically as Paul dying of cancer), just-freed Jack expires outside the station, overcome by the heat of incarceration. Kathy kisses her snowman lover goodbye, and trudges away, a sad spinster once again. But Lo! A shout from behind turns her frown upside down, because it turns out her lips were magic, and Jack is not just alive but a live …man! The snow part of him is gone and we know this because now he is susceptible to cold, shivering in Hope Springs’ eternal snowstorm.
And just to prove he really is a normal man forever after, when we see the happy couple exchanging gifts on Christmas Day, Jack gets Kathy a home repair book and waits while she fixes her boiler, and she gets him tickets to Hawaii. Because that’s what proper blokes do. You want romance? You want warmth? You want your shelves fixed? Shag a fucking snowman, bitch. Real men are COLD, and make you DIY.
If all of the above makes you believe I didn’t like this film then you couldn’t be more wrong. I loved it. It was funny, it was silly, it was cosy, it was festive, everyone in it did a great job, and it made me believe snowmen are real. I will watch it again next year and every year after that, just like I do Falling for Christmas, Last Christmas, A Castle for Christmas, The Holiday and Die Hard. Sometimes you’ve just got to lose yourself in the magic.
This is the improbable and excellent premise of 2024’s top Christmas movie offering, the aptly, magnificently titled HOT FROSTY. Before we go on, let’s take a moment to really savour that, shall we? Let us walk around it admiringly, running a caressing hand along the curves of those seductively repeated vowels, stopping to appreciate the wondrous sibilance of that second word, which should be an adjective but we know – we know – is a noun. A proper noun. ‘HOT’: like your laptop after you’ve watched three eps of Emily in Paris on the trot. ‘FROSTY’: like the receptionist at work when you forgot your pass again. NO. Not like that. It’s ‘Hot’, like the priest or rabbi you can’t have because God gets in the way. And ‘Frosty’, like The Snowman. But a sexy version. HOT FROSTY - a SILF. Frankly, it felt like all my Christmases had come at once. So I lit my fairy lights (that’s not a euphemism, though on reflection, maybe it is), poured myself a little glass of something, and with a saucy look to camera, fired up Netflix.
We’re in Hope Springs, because of course we are, snow is falling from a blue sky and Kathy is waking in a cold, broken home, because her husband died of cancer and he did the handy stuff around the house. It’s essential for a love interest to have a tragic past in a Christmas romcom – usually it’s the man who’s a doting single father and sad widower, but in this instance it’s the woman who’s loved and lost, though she doesn’t have a child because that would make things messy. Kathy is a waitress, because of course she is – it’s a convenient profession to demonstrate her hardworking nature and familiarity with everyone in her home town. After a tiring day at the culinary coalface, she wanders through Hope Springs’ snow sculpting competition displays and pauses in front of a Snow-Adonis. A Snowdonis? He’s fit AF, but, you know, he’s also a glacial effigy so not really a romantic prospect. OR IS HE? Kathy puts her scarf around him in a pointlessly compassionate gesture, and somehow that’s the only spark of magic ‘Frosty’ needs to firm him up. In the blink of an eye, he’s gone from ice to niiiiice, running round town completely starkers, biceps bulging like the vocal sac of a bullfrog. It’s Olaf meets… He-Man.
After accidentally breaking and entering the local second-hand store, Hope Springs’ newest resident purposely steals some clothes to make himself decent, and is then discovered by Kathy telling his frozen sculpture friends all about his adventures. Rather than march him to the nearest institution, Kathy lets ‘Jack’ move in with her, despite being understandably resistant to the notion that he is, in fact, a vaguely sentient pile of slush. Innocent of human ways, Jack is naturally rather… I suppose ‘childlike’ is the most benign way of putting it. A great big man-baby, is another way. This newborn dude, who used to be made of white powder, is a bit of a div. But he’s also a quick learner, and watching Kathy’s telly all day teaches him all sorts of things, just like E.T.
It’s important to note that Hot Frosty pays dogged homage to various other filmic oeuvres. Jack being a kid at heart harks back to Tom Hanks’ Big, which in retrospect also had a pretty dodgy romantic premise. Or the other Tom Hanks film Splash, if you replace the whole half-man-half-snow with half-woman-half-fish. Hope Springs appears to be filmed on the set of Back to the Future, and towards the end of the story, the producers have a wildly ambitious stab at It’s a Wonderful Life, which falls sadly, wonderfully flat. More of that anon – something to look forward to!
So, with these Crimbo-coms, the Yule-rules state that there has to be a stupid sub-plot and in this blizzard of bollocks, it’s the local Sheriff becoming obsessed with which dastardly villain broke into Reclaimed Rags, gradually zoning in on recently-rolled-into-the-region Jack Frosty. Our plucky snow-child’s wide-eyed new life as Hope Spring’s resident handyman, eye-candy for the middle-aged, and Kathy’s devoted lodger is under threat. Oh, and also whenever he goes inside for prolonged periods, he starts to melt, what with him being some sort of amiable yeti.
Kathy’s heart is cold after her husband Paul died, but Jack warms it up with his peculiar brand of ardent, say-what-you-feel openness, manual dexterity, and those great big guns that pop whenever he does anything handy or helpful, which is all the time. It was at this point that I started to see what they were getting at, message-wise, with this movie, and the screenwriter obligingly articulates it when one of the townsfolk explains to Kathy why it’s easy for them to believe the far-fetched explanation of Jack’s true background. A man like that - gorgeous, guileless, kind, useful; there’s got to be magic involved. Anyone that hot MUST be frosty, i.e. he’s definitely a snowman, because he’s a unicorn.
All Hope Springs’ citizens are remarkably sanguine about Jack’s true identity: ‘yeah, why not’ being the overwhelming response. Plus he’s a popular chap, so when Sheriff Nate locks him up in a stuffy jail cell in the mistaken belief that he’s an international terrorist (Jack has no fingerprints, and let’s be honest, ‘terrorist’ is less of a leap than ‘snowman’), everyone gathers outside to demand Frosty’s release before all that’s left of him is a puddle. Kathy’s short on bail money, therefore one and all put their hands in their pockets to contribute, and shame the Sheriff into submission. It’s about as far from Bedford Falls coming to George Bailey’s rescue as ‘Walking in the Air’ sung by Aled Jones is from ‘Baby Got Back’ rapped by Sir Mix-a-Lot.
Tragically (though, it must be said, not as tragically as Paul dying of cancer), just-freed Jack expires outside the station, overcome by the heat of incarceration. Kathy kisses her snowman lover goodbye, and trudges away, a sad spinster once again. But Lo! A shout from behind turns her frown upside down, because it turns out her lips were magic, and Jack is not just alive but a live …man! The snow part of him is gone and we know this because now he is susceptible to cold, shivering in Hope Springs’ eternal snowstorm.
And just to prove he really is a normal man forever after, when we see the happy couple exchanging gifts on Christmas Day, Jack gets Kathy a home repair book and waits while she fixes her boiler, and she gets him tickets to Hawaii. Because that’s what proper blokes do. You want romance? You want warmth? You want your shelves fixed? Shag a fucking snowman, bitch. Real men are COLD, and make you DIY.
If all of the above makes you believe I didn’t like this film then you couldn’t be more wrong. I loved it. It was funny, it was silly, it was cosy, it was festive, everyone in it did a great job, and it made me believe snowmen are real. I will watch it again next year and every year after that, just like I do Falling for Christmas, Last Christmas, A Castle for Christmas, The Holiday and Die Hard. Sometimes you’ve just got to lose yourself in the magic.
- Hot Frosty, Netflix
