Netflix is in the midst of eating Hallmark’s lunch as a little dessert after everyone else has eaten it, now putting two new original Christmas movies at the top of the streamer’s most popular list. . These are genre plays aimed at Christmas movie fans, making use of all the expected clichés. One, “The Merry Gentlemen,” tells the story of a woman who saves her parents’ small-town venue by staging an all-male revue, “Magic Mike.” But it’s the other piece I want to talk about here: Hot Frosty. It reached number one on Netflix and has become something of a bit of a viral sensation, and frankly, women are wondering if it’s okay.
In Hot Frosty, Lacey Chabert (most recently from Hallmark, where she made more than 30 Christmas movies) plays young widow Cassie Barrett. She lost her husband to cancer, and her house gradually fell apart due to the grief. Especially. (This is a Christmas movie, so by “falling apart” I mean the furnace is broken, the roof is leaking, and there’s a hole in the stair step.) It’s still clean outside, and looking pretty nice. ) Kathy, of course, she runs the local diner. The store is, of course, located in her small town’s adorable downtown. The diner seems to be doing well, at least with good attendance. But her interactions with her co-workers reveal that she is a woman on autopilot.
All that changes when Kathy receives the gift of a red scarf from a kindly older friend who owns a thrift store. He promised me that all I needed to do to meet new people was put myself out there. “Good things happen when you’re outside in the cold,” my friend said with a wink. This line foreshadows what will happen next. It’s not that Cassie goes out to a bar wearing a scarf and meets a guy (that doesn’t sound very Christmassy!), but rather that she wraps the scarf around the neck of a ridiculously pudgy snowman. It was submitted to the town’s snow sculpture contest. She takes a photo with her iPhone and goes home to bed.
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A snowman comes to life in a swirl of icy glow. It turned out to be Dustin Milligan, who played the charming veterinarian in Schitt’s Creek. Milligan spends a lot of time flexing his abs in this film, a fact that (as lovers of the genre would say) makes the film a little more “spicy” than other Christmas movies. In fact, when the snowman is first “born,” he wears only a scarf, and just like in the movie, while the snowman moves around and learns about his new body, a scarf magically appears on the front of his crotch. The scarf stays in place. This snowman, who calls himself Jack after a patch on his work clothes he got from the same thrift store, has a deep and abiding loyalty to Cassie, the woman who kept him alive from birth.
One of the things about Hot Frosty is that we’re not supposed to think too much about Jack’s biology (it’s just movie magic) or his motivations. He’s here for Kathy. Romancelandia has a term used to describe heroes who are extremely cooperative and kind. “Cinnamon roll”. They are attractive people with a gentle personality. In movies and television, think of innocent lovers like Kristoff in Frozen or Peter Kavinsky in To All the Loves You’ve Loved Before. However, this trope can be taken too far, with simple heroes like Buddy, the elf who has the brain of a six-year-old but develops a romance story, or my personal least favorite, the anti-hero from True Blood. A baby with a bleached brain appears. Vampire Viking Erik (Alexander Skarsgård) loses his memory and is transformed by a witch’s curse. (God, I hated seeing him at Sookie’s house, wearing basketball shorts and watching TV on the couch, turned into a cinnamon roll. Someone should take him in and take care of him.) It was necessary, but I digress!)
In Hot Frosty, “Newborn” Jack’s innocence and enthusiasm know no bounds. He learns things like how to fix a roof and how to cook from television. He is on the roof shirtless. Because it doesn’t get too hot. (Just a reminder!) He’s a snowman. He is confused by the reaction of an elderly woman who sees him on the roof, and is so hot that he drives his car onto a curb. He doesn’t seem to understand what sex is, and there’s a funny scene where Jack tries to push an older woman off the curb by pushing her from behind. (She enthusiastically agrees, and the humor of the scene comes from Jack’s indifference.) He helps decorate for a middle school holiday dance and becomes obsessed with it. With her gleeful enthusiasm for Jack’s antics and her protectiveness of Jack when the Sheriff (Craig Robinson) puts him in jail to uphold law and order for his constituents, Cassie is none other than Reminds me of my mother. A very precocious and adorable preschooler.
Isn’t that funny? Really, really not. This year’s Barbenheimer is here. This time, there is no question who will win. There is nothing better for them. There’s only one reason they are the way they are. Athletes suddenly become as grumpy as Trump. Oh, oh.
In the end, Jack somehow (don’t think too hard) becomes a real man, and Cassie and Jack begin a new chapter in their lives. In the end, Cassie is the one who fixes the furnace, so you think, well, she came out of her hole. she’s okay. To perform the trick, all she had to do was take care of and fall in love with a strangely ethereal blank slate. “Is this a Jesus movie?” Rachel Handler asked, tossing her tongue about the Vulture. I tend to agree with this assessment of @towerofgrog regarding X. He points out that much of the “cheesy and fun media, especially holiday media” aimed at women is “based on the premise, ‘What if we had really attractive media?'” Someone who never had the social skills of a normal man? ” I don’t want to get too serious about this kind of fluff, but that’s exactly what Hot Frosty is. Jack will never be appointed to Donald Trump’s cabinet! He has no history. he is the perfect man
But “Hot Frosty” will appeal to Netflix viewers who like abs and Schitt’s Creek, to Netflix viewers who like Christmas movies, to Netflix viewers who like Robinson from “The Office” and Joe Lo from “Brooklyn Nine-Nine.” It will also satisfy Netflix viewers who find Truglio really funny playing a small-town sheriff. Netflix viewer Lohan enjoys Easter eggs, including Chabert’s character’s brief glimpse of Lindsay Lohan watches Netflix Christmas movie on TV and says, “She looks like someone I went to high school with.” Hot Frosty’s popularity is an indicator If so, things like this will continue to happen. Maybe next time, the next Kathy will put a scarf on her pumpkin pie.
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