Hot Frosty review – Netflix’s sexy snowman romance is as silly as expected | Romantic movies

Talthough I personally believe that all Christmas movies should wait until after Thanksgiving – it just stopped being 80F (26C) in New York City last week, yikes – I can’t fault a movie for being exactly what it needs to be. The trailer for Hot Frosty, Netflix’s newest foray into Hallmark holiday territory, promised to answer the question no one asked: what if Frosty the Snowman had abs?

Curious minds actually want to know. Fortunately, the actual finished product, 90 minutes of extremely frivolous, occasionally sweet fluff written by Russell Hainline, delivers logistical and spiritual answers to Half-Naked Alive Snowman’s dilemma with complete dedication to the genre. Said snowman, Jack (Dustin Milligan), wakes up with barely a strategically placed scarf to cover him. The town of Hope Springs is even more of a mirage in New England (for example, Canada) than Gilmore Girls’ Stars Hollow. The snow is obviously styrofoam. All the old women are horny. Chrishell Stause also lives there. Merry Christmas!

I have to appreciate a movie that gets going right away—10 minutes after we learn that Kathy (Mean Girls’ Lacey Chabert) lives in a run-down house, owns a cafe (sorry, Kathy’s Kafe ) and is sad and alone, she has a tattered human icebox on her hands. Because she put the scarf on him, he has imprinted on her and says he loves her instantly. He runs cold, so he hardly ever wears a shirt (it would be nice if Mulligan’s abs came with a slightly less childish performance). Kathy’s doctor friend (Katy Mixon) concludes that Jack’s body temperature is below freezing and therefore he must be a snowman—a fact that most of the townspeople accept rather quickly because, as friendly vintage store owner Jane (Lauren Holly) puts it , “a man that cute should just be magical, don’t you think?”

The point of Jack, as much as one exists, is to help Kathy heal after her beloved husband’s death from cancer, revealed by a doctor’s note saying “chemotherapy will start immediately” in Comic Sans (thanks, director Jerry Ciccoritti) . And the point of Hot Frosty, as much as there is one, is meringue-light fantasy fulfillment, except for the fact that Jack doesn’t know how to kiss or ask Kathy on a date. But he’s a quick learner, eager to cook dinner and tidy the house, gets along with everyone, and never wants to wear a shirt again. They don’t make real snowmen like this anymore!

The only problem is that the sheriff, Nate (Craig Robinson, clearly having a ball), is a caricature of a cop trying to make a name for himself by arresting the mysterious long-haired “streaker” seen around town. Robinson and his deputy (Joe Lo Truglio) enliven Hot Frosty with a comically over-the-top good cop/bad cop routine and extremely arbitrary bail costs, a necessary addition given that there’s not much to Jack other than … abs and elf coziness (he, too, prefers straight sugar together with ice cubes).

But never fear—although Chabert evokes the feeling of a woman who has already seen one man die and may be about to watch another literally melt to death, Hot Frosty is overwhelmingly ridiculous cheer. It delivers on pretty much everything you could hope for from a movie called Hot Frosty: adults attending a high school dance just because, in a Lindsay Lohan Mean Girls/Falling For Christmas reference, a woman yells, “What can I do? You can’t defibrillate a snowman!” and the ugliest snowflake necklace I’ve ever seen in my life.

I’m as much of a skeptic as anyone of Netflix’s penchant for framing movies as “content” to get audiences to see movies as cheap and disposable, but there’s little to hate here. It’s a genuinely stupid idea sincerely executed, with seemingly complete buy-in from everyone involved that yes, this is a movie about a snowman with abs. I’ll take that type of brain freeze for now.