The Netflix board watch their latest reboot of classic family favourite The Snowman, by Raymond Briggs, a magical tale of a snowman who comes to life and takes a small boy on an enchanting journey to the North Pole.
Netflix chief executive Ted Sarandos frowns. He is holding his fingers to his chin in a classic “thoughtful” pose. The director, Zack Snyder, (probably) says, “What’s the problem, my liege? You seem troubled.”
“I feel ... insufficiently sexually attracted to the snowman,” says Sarandos.
“I’m glad someone said it,” says Netflix chairman Reed Hastings. “Zack, when you said you were remaking The Snowman, I assumed he’d have really defined abs and pecs. This snowman is a total pudge. I’m not remotely aroused by him. It’s like that wasn’t even your intention.”
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“I’m so sorry, your majesties,” says Zack Snyder.
“And there’s not even a slight implication that the snowman has sex in this film,” says Hastings. “What sort of Christmas movie is this?”
“I was expecting a little more ‘hubba-hubba, vroom-vroom, arooooga!’” says Sarandos, sadly. “But this moderately attractive snow person leaves me cold – excuse the pun. I mean, I guess if it was just before closing time I’d have a go, but ... ” He sighs. “For the most part I feel nothing.”
And thus began the development process for Hot Frosty, a Netflix Christmas movie about a hunky snow sculpture who comes to life and who you can totally imagine having sex. There’s a market for this, apparently. There’s now a whole interconnected world of Hallmark-style, low-tension Christmas movies in which a small-business owner with a tragic past falls in love with an unlikely hunk.
In Hot Frosty that hunk is more unlikely than usual, given that he starts out as an inanimate mound of snow. Lars von Trier’s Hot Frosty would be a sad story that didn’t involve magic and did involve social services. Luckily, Jerry Ciccoritti’s Hot Frosty is a little more whimsical.
Films in the Kringleverse (my coinage) always use the same familiar tropes. Once more a former teen star – in this instance Lacey Chabert from Party of Five – plays a small-business owner, Kathy, who owns Kathy’s Kafe. (They wisely chose not to call it Kathy’s Kosy Kafe.) She resides in Hope Springs, a quaint, highly illuminated Christmas town that can be seen from space. She is, of course, a widow, grieving the man who is flatly Photoshopped into her wedding photos.
Kathy’s worried friends give her a scarf that, for unclear reasons, she puts around the shoulders of an unaccountably hunky snowman, who is flanked by more classically rotund snowmen. Unlike the snowman in The Snowman, Hot Frosty (for that is surely his name) is not turned into a sentient ice behemoth but is transmuted into a real man – flesh and bone and veins and internal organs.
Don’t think about this for too long. What if she had put the scarf around one of the ordinary snowmen? Would they have turned into flesh monstrosities with completely circular heads, torsos and lower bodies? Presumably so. I’d like to see that film. Aaagh Frosty, I would call it.
Why does the snowman become a real man? It’s like electricity or how our phones work: nobody knows. All we need to know is that Hot Frosty is a sculpted Adonis who is completely nude except for a scarf. He is spotted by an old lady who says, more or less, “Hubba-hubba, vroom-vroom, arooooga!” much as Sarandos foretold. Hot Frosty then crashes through the window of a clothes shop where he gets a sleeveless canvas onesie and some Ugg boots. “Hey, Hot Frosty, that’s my look!” I yell.
The next day Hot Frosty bumps into Kathy, who is surprised by his summery attire, lack of hypothermia, general cluelessness and claims that he is an ice sculpture come to life. “I was made of snow! Now I’m not made of snow!” he says, but he doesn’t add, “Now I’m made of MEAT!” because the film-makers don’t want us to think about that too much.
Kathy brings him to her doctor friend, who also says some version of “Hubba-hubba, vroom-vroom, arooooga!” before being shocked at his sub-zero temperature. A woman of science, she concludes that Hot Frosty is, in fact, an ice sculpture come to life. These people are lunatics.
There’s more. We learn that he is being pursued by zealous local cops played by comedy geniuses Craig Robinson and Joe Lo Truglio. Kathy takes Hot Frosty home, where he marvels at modern technology. What do women want? A hunky idiot without a past, that’s what.
Hot Frosty uses television to learn how to make eggnog (Kathy compliments his “fantastic nog”) and how to shirtlessly fix stuff. Before long he catches the eye of a bunch of local women who respond, as is tradition, with “Hubba-hubba, vroom-vroom, arooooga!” and then put him to work fixing things. It would really be fitting at this point for the women of Hope Springs to break into a chorus of “I’m walking in the air,” although with the L replaced with an N.
Hot Frosty fixes Kathy’s house. He gets a job at the local school (without Garda vetting – despite having no social-security number he is hired straight away). He keeps worrying about melting. Kathy takes him shopping and dresses him, Pretty Woman style. To drive the point home Roy Orbison sings Pretty Woman. Often, high-concept fantasies are, in fact, metaphors. Perhaps this is a metaphor for sex work. No, it’s not. You’re wrong. It’s the literal story of a hunky snowman who comes to life.
Kathy and Hot Frosty bake. Kathy and Hot Frosty dance. Eventually, at a Christmas Eve party, Craig Robinson insists on arresting Hot Frosty and taking him to a too-hot jail. Hot Frosty sweats profusely. He tells Craig Robinson that he might melt. (What would that look like? Will they go full body horror?)
Kathy reveals to the townsfolk that Hot Frosty is a snowman who has transformed into a human man. They instantly believe her because, as we’ve established, these people are lunatics. They go to the jail and prevail upon Craig Robinson to release Hot Frosty, offering up money to pay his bail. Craig Robinson relents, but when they get Hot Frosty from the jail he is dying. And then he’s dead. The townsfolk turn to leave Hot Frosty’s body lying dead in the snow, presumably for the bin collectors to take away on St Stephen’s Day. But then he rises from the dead, much like Christ.
If this were a European film it would end with Hot Frosty staying on to tend to the thirsty women of Hope Springs. But this is the individualistic United States, so he instead settles monogamously with Kathy, who finds this sculpted tabula rasa a more than adequate replacement for her late husband, a human man with hopes and dreams who is most definitely spinning in his grave.
For the record, in the event of my death, I have forbidden my wife from replacing me with a hunky snowman. I didn’t think this needed to be said, but I’ve learned a lot in 2024.
