We’ve all heard the story of “Frosty the Snowman,” where Christmas magic brings a snowman to life to help teach the people around him a powerful lesson. In the Netflix Original “Hot Frosty” that story is a little bit different.
A snowman named Jack, played by Dustin Milligan, does come to life and helps Cathy, played by Lacey Chabert, heal after the loss of her husband, but this story is not quite as heartwarming as the other Christmas stories we’ve come to love.
How you introduce a character is so important in any film, but especially in these short, cheesy rom-coms where liking and rooting for the characters is the whole point. “Hot Frosty” starts out by introducing us to Cathy, and from what we see her entire personality at first is just “widow.” From Cathy’s house, which is falling apart, to the way everyone walks on eggshells around her, it’s clear that she’s struggling and it’s very easy to feel empathy for her in that moment.
Jack has a much different and much more startling introduction. After Cathy puts a magical scarf around an incredibly chiseled and unrealistic looking snowman body, Jack comes to life and spends his first two minutes of screen time running around town naked, flashing a poor old couple and their dog and then breaking the window of a store in town to steal some clothes. To say this is a shocking way to introduce the main love interest of the film is to put it lightly.
Since he used to be a snowman, Jack has no idea how the world works. He’s experiencing everything for the first time and doesn’t really know how to act around people, which is all understandable. What I don’t understand is why he stays this way pretty much the entire movie. While his character grows a little bit, for the most part he is just a naive, two-dimensional character whose only redeemable quality is how he occasionally does tasks for people such as fixing Cathy’s roof or decorating the school's gym for their winter dance. But besides that, there really is nothing to him as a character. From the second he and Cathy meet at the start of the film to when they kiss at the end, it makes no sense to me as to how Cathy falls for this incredibly simple man.
What’s worse is everyone in town ignores how basic he is because he’s conventionally attractive. A woman drives her car into a snowbank because she got distracted by how hot he is. The old lady he flashed at the beginning of the film couldn’t give a description of him to the police, who are looking for the person who robbed the store, because they only “needed a description of his face” and we are led to believe she could only describe his body. Sure, he’s a nice guy and he fixes things around town, but it’s infuriating just how much they let him get away with because he’s attractive.
One of the few things I enjoyed about this movie were the references made throughout the film. I’m an avid watcher of these cheesy Netflix Christmas rom-coms, so when Cathy jokes about being the “Queen of Aldovia,” a reference to the Netflix film series “A Christmas Prince,” it felt like a fun little reference that helps tie this movie into the larger Netflix Christmas movie universe. Chabert, who plays Gretchen Wieners in “Mean Girls,” makes a reference to the iconic 2004 film when a scene from Lindsay Lohan’s “Falling for Christmas” plays on Cathy’s TV and she says Lohan looks like a girl she went to high school with. It’s not much but the reference is a nice reminder of a distant, better film.
Other bright lights in this very long and dark tunnel are Deputy Sheriff Ed Schatz and Sheriff Nathaniel Hunter, played by Joe Lo Truglio and Craig Robinson, respectively. Truglio and Robinson, who worked together previously on “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” as Charles Boyle and Doug Judy, are a hilarious duo in this film. The two cops work together to arrest Jack for the crimes he committed at the beginning of the film and end up being two of the funniest people in every scene they’re in. They also sing a song to go along with the end credits and it was a great way to celebrate the movie finally being over.
Before we can get to the credits though, we must sit through what I think was supposed to be a heartwarming ending. But after the confusing plot, I was left questioning the sanity of these townspeople. Not only do they spend all the money they have on them to bail Jack out of jail on Christmas Eve, but they do this because they all blindly accept that he’s a snowman and they want to help Cathy rescue him before he melts. There was no questioning this statement, no one deciding that a snowman coming to life is impossible. They just say that “It’s Christmas” so of course a snowman can come to life.
I’ve seen a lot of bad Christmas rom-coms over the years, most of them being Netflix originals, but I think out of all those movies, “Hot Frosty” might be one of the worst. With unlikeable characters, a confusing plot and Jack, because he’s in a bad category of his own, I’ll be okay if I don’t see another snowman for a long time.
