It’s been more than 20 years since cartoonist Peter Morley Souter invented the one internet rule that everyone agrees on: Rule #34, which says that if something exists, there is a version categorized as X. It was true then, and it’s true now. But I think it’s finally time for an important addition: Rule #34a: This also applies to Christmas movies.
In fact, Christmas movies for TV have a lot in common with adult entertainment. They’re cheap, they hit the spot, and there’s more to them than you’ll ever see in your life. And it seems like you can make them on literally anything. So a movie like Hot Frosty, a Netflix original romantic comedy Christmas movie about a very breakable snowman, shouldn’t be more than a drop in the bucket. It even stars Lacey Chabert, who starred in it with Alicia Witt, Danica McKellar and Candace Cameron Bure (you can trust me on this one, I did the numbers). Eight billion Christmas movies.
But none of them are much like “Hot Frosty.” That’s not because the movie is about Lacey Chabert falling in love with a sexy ice sculpture played by Dustin Milligan, best known for “Schitt’s Creek,” which he once directed. The post-credits rap video for the 2011 killer shark movie “Shark Night” (which was better than “Shark Night”). That’s because this movie, unlike the rest of the very chaste movies in this subgenre, is incredibly sexualized. There’s a scene where Lauren Holly (“Dumb and Dumber”) stumbles in the snow and a shirtless cupcake asks questions like “Do you want me to stand behind you and push you?” and “Are you ready for me?” before revving the engine and groaning in satisfaction. Hallmark would never do that
“Hot Frosty” is an allegory for cancer, but we’ll come back to that later.
Chabert stars in Hot Frosty as Kathy, who runs a restaurant in a small town called Hope Springs. Every year, Hope Springs hosts an ice carving contest, and one of the participants this year is a chubby stallion with bedroom eyes and a six-pack. Kathy, whose husband died a few years ago, puts a red scarf on the snowman and he magically comes to life, naked except for the scarf, which attaches so precariously to his genitals that it is also described as “Christmas magic.”
The snowman, who calls himself Jack, gets in trouble at first. He runs around town and has to resort to stealing to get clothes. But soon he arrives at Kathy’s house, makes her a ham pizza, fixes her half-naked roof, and because it’s a Netflix original movie and that’s the law, he watches other Netflix originals on Netflix.
Will Kathy and Jack fall in love? Yes, will two eccentric cops in town, played by Craig Robinson and Joe Lo Truglio, briefly interfere with their romance to artificially raise the stakes in a conflict-free story? Yes, these are not the important questions Hot Frosty asks its audience. The important questions are about cancer.
“Hot Frosty” was written by Russell Hineline (“The Santa Summit”), and when he wasn’t writing silly dialog like “Since the beginning of time, Christmas fairy tales often include the return of a snowman to town,” he was taking his premise seriously. “He was taking his premise oddly seriously. The story of Frosty the Snowman is about a magical being who knows he’s going to melt soon. There’s a real analogy to this: Having a terminal illness. So, Kathy’s husband dies young and she gathers up her old life and hides it in her basement.
Which in turn leads to another line of brilliantly silly dialog in the movie, and perhaps the weirdest thing any actor has ever said in 2024 (sorry, Megalopolis): “Well, today I was checking the house for vampires and I was gone.” Down the stairs. What is cancer?
“What is cancer?”, actually. Jack doesn’t have cancer, but he’s dying. Destined to dissolve, which will leave Cathy alone and grieving again. That’s why he wants to make the most of the little time they have together. And look, “Hot lukewarm?” Can we talk in parentheses here for a second? You didn’t need to try so hard.. Or maybe it did, but that’s not the kind of “trying hard” we expect from a sexy snowman movie. Why do you make us feel something so big? Actually, let me rephrase that: Why do you make us feel such a big emotion?)
“Hot Frosty” could have been a terrible movie and gotten away with it, winning the rating solely based on satirical reviews. And in some ways, that’s not really good. It’s cheap and stupid and has a silly premise that some people are going to get something horrible wrong. But it’s also a wink and a whim. He knows what he’s doing and he’s doing it on purpose. In a way, it really works. Schappert can play this role in his sleep, so his professionalism is not surprising. It’s Milligan who comes out of nowhere. He brings an innocent, doe-eyed quality to the sexy, half-naked snowman that makes him easy to love and makes all the jokes easy to swallow.
“Hot Frosty,” on the other hand, is easy to swallow. The movie’s director, Jerry Security (“TekWar: TekJustice”) finds a good balance between romance and silliness, and keeps the smut flowing. There is plenty of obscenity. This may be the only Christmas romantic comedy in which you learn the truth that half the characters enjoy themselves every time they’re off-camera because the snowman turns them on. (If not, you’ll have to tell me the name of the other.) It’s almost certainly the only sexy romantic snowman movie that’s also a metaphor for cancer. And I’ll bet my corncob pipe is the only one that gets away with it.
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