This 12 months’s Goofiest, Strangest Christmas Film Has Taken Over Netflix

For a few years, the Hallmark Channel appeared to have a monopoly on the made-for-TV Christmas rom-com subgenre. However as streamers like Netflix proceed to grow to be the primary supply of leisure for hundreds of thousands of individuals throughout the globe, they have been increasing their authentic choices to incorporate these foolish, saccharine, and undeniably addictive films that folks can not seem to get sufficient of through the vacation season. Positive, there are some that merely hate-watch some of these tales about high-powered ladies who go to their humble hometowns for the vacations and determine to offer all of it as much as fall again in love with their now-hunky highschool sweethearts who personal farms and completely put on festive flannels, however there are many individuals who genuinely, unapologetically love these films.

Netflix hasn’t been afraid to embrace even essentially the most absurd set-ups for these films, establishing its personal very actual and bonafide multiverse of vacation films. Nonetheless, the previous reigning queen Vanessa Hudgens, Vanessa Hudgens, and Vanessa Hudgens (her triple-role as proven in “The Princess Change 3: Romancing the Star”) has lastly been dethroned, as a result of viewers can not seem to get sufficient of the Girl-Falls-For-a-Snowman film, “Sizzling Frosty.”

Following the identical story premise because the “Frosty the Snowman” lore everyone knows and love, “Imply Women” and made-for-TV rom-com star Lacey Chabert performs Kathy, a widow who wraps a magical scarf round a snowman (that appears like the results of Michelangelo’s artistry had he chosen snow as an alternative of marble for his most well-liked medium). The hunky snowman involves life as a person named Jack (“Schitt’s Creek” star Dustin Milligan) and instantly falls in love along with her. If you happen to’re anticipating the ethical energy of one thing like “It is a Great Life,” you are a idiot. However in the event you’re down to observe Gretchen Wieners fall in love with a himbo snowman in a city that appears prefer it jumped off of a Christmas postcard offered at Hallmark shops, you are in for a vacation deal with.

“Sizzling Frosty” author Russell Hainline offered a candy origin story of the movie on Letterboxd, admitting that the title of the movie got here first, and simply the considered a film referred to as “Sizzling Frosty” made him giggle “like a madman.” He then began pitching the movie to his associates with the tagline, “What if, when Frosty the Snowman got here to life … he was a super-hot dude?” Actually, it virtually sells itself. He began critically writing the movie following the quarantine period of the pandemic and admitted it was when his anxiousness was changing into debilitating. “I used to be personally popping out of a time when my anxiousness was at an all-time excessive,” he wrote. “I wasn’t loving myself and I actually wasn’t loving the world.”

Hainline channeled that vitality right into a little bit of want achievement for the character of Jack — a “particular person” who was actually born yesterday and who sees the world via optimistic eyes with out being slowed down by the entire harsh realities that make us all inch nearer and nearer to our inevitable, Scrooge-esque ultimate kinds. “I actually, actually tried to make the center of the film one thing that felt actual to me. studying to like your self, studying to search out methods to maneuver on,” he continued. “Studying to take advantage of the restricted time you’ve gotten on this planet (and, as Vulture accurately identified, studying methods to attempt to persevere within the face of police abuse of energy!)” 

That is the true secret to all of the movies of this very unusual subgenre. As a lot as folks prefer to blow them off as nothing greater than tacky fluff, there’s at all times some type of deeper message on the middle. Chabert’s Kathy remains to be studying methods to transfer ahead after the passing of her husband, and “Sizzling Frosty” is not afraid of acknowledging the problem that comes with that exact taste of grief. On the identical time, Craig Robinson and Joe Lo Truglio are the buddy-cop comedic reduction that doubles because the movie’s primary antagonists, however who completely embody the unchecked energy journeys present in small-town legislation enforcement brokers.

Lacey Chabert has starred in over 30 Hallmark films at this level, however “Sizzling Frosty” is, on this author’s opinion, her strongest outing since “Christian Mingle” (sure, a film sponsored by the Christian courting service), as a result of she has to maintain “Sizzling Frosty” grounded whereas surrounded by absolute absurdity. She’s our “relatable everywoman” with simply sufficient uniqueness to keep away from feeling like a nothingburger of a personality, whereas additionally being archetypal sufficient for any viewer to slide themselves into her place and observe her on this journey.

Director Jerry Ciccoritti makes use of the digital camera to current Dustin Milligan in a method that turns him right into a hunky calendar mannequin at each flip, whether or not he is fixing up roofs and home windows round city, befriending everybody in the neighborhood, cooking do-it-yourself meals for Kathy, or, y’know, rubbing ice on his washboard abs as a result of he is a snowman and attempting to “hold chilly.” They’re each so dialed into their roles as an unlikely couple falling in love and saving the city from power-happy cops, however they’re boosted by a supporting solid that additionally understands the task and by no means as soon as acts as in the event that they’re “above” it.

Positive, the script gleefully borrows from well-known romantic comedies and Christmas classics alike, however that is half the enjoyable of watching it. “Sizzling Frosty” is a film that understands the tropes of the style and does not attempt to subvert them or distance themselves from them — as an alternative, refusing to run away from precisely what kind of film that is.

Mattress a snowman this vacation season, women. You’ve got earned it.