Discovering the true meaning of Christmas has become a film genre

Containers spoilers for 2024 Netflix holiday movie Hot Frosty

Hallmark Christmas movies. Everyone knows about them. They are bland, formulaic, extremely low budget, and usually serve as background noise to family gatherings during the holidays.

Believe it or not, those movies are a huge cottage industry. Hallmark Channel has churned out over 200 in the last four years and they are all the same. Boy/girl from the big city goes to small town where he/she falls in love with a local and discovers the true meaning of Christmas. No surprises, no veering off the beaten path. Wholesome, inoffensive and as saccharine as possible.

Seeing how hugely successful this industry is, Netflix decided to get in on the action and this year surprised an unsuspecting public with Hot Frosty, a movie so unhinged it makes The Fast and Furious look like avant-garde cinema.

The plot of this movie is that a snowman comes to life and falls in love with a woman. Somehow, this is the least crazy thing that happens. And I loved every single moment!

The movie stars the queen of Hallmark movies, Lacey Chabert who has starred in more than 50 so far saying, “It’s easy money”.

Lambert is a widow who owns a diner in a small town called Hope Springs. Cause, hope springs eternal, get it? DID YOU GET IT? This tells you everything you need to know about the movie and the level of writing to expect. If the bar was any lower, it would be underground.

While at work she visits a second-hand clothing store, where the kindly owner gives her a red scarf, which is of huge importance for her. It is the scarf that changed her life, a scarf that she was wearing when she met the man of her dreams. A scarf that for all intents and purposes, is magic. And what does our heroine do with such a meaningful and thoughtful gift? She puts it on a snowman right outside the store! She literally threw it away, no second thought! A scarf that meant the world to a friend of hers and she was like “Naaah man, don’t need it”.

Oh, and the snowman that she put the scarf on? That snowman came to life! Side note: The snowman was supposedly life-like and was part of a snowman competition. So when it came to life, it appeared as a muscular, well-built man. A naked man. With male anatomy. This means that someone took part in that snowman competition and decided to make an anatomically correct snowman! With kids around! No alarm bells, nobody bat an eyelid, nobody was like “Hey you there, what ON EARTH are you doing with that snowman?!”

Lambert and the snowman – whose name is Jack, from the character Jack Frost, and he is good-looking, hence “Hot Frosty”. DID YOU GET IT?! – meet and, of course, she decides to take him in, only mildly reacting to the Earth-shattering news that reality is just a concept, magic exists and that garments have the power to breathe life into inanimate objects.

Being a clever girl she decides that something is wrong so she takes Jack to literally the worst doctor that ever existed. A person whose medical licence should immediately be revoked and perhaps needs to be sent to jail or at the very least be examined by a panel of psychologists.

Upon examining the – and I cannot stress this enough – snowman brought to life, the doctor comes to the shocking conclusion that his temperature is 1C. Was she bothered that he should be dead but was instead talking to her and making jokes? Not in the least. Nope. Nothing. When Lambert expressed her doubts on whether or not he was indeed a snowman, the DOCTOR, the MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL goes something like “eh you know, I can’t explain Santa or elves as well so he might as well be a snowman”.

I was speechless.

Just when I thought I had enough, Craig Robinson and Joe Lo Truglio showed up as the up-tight town sheriff and his loveable, simple-minded sidekick. The two of them of, of course, appeared many times together in the hit series Brooklyn 99, also available on Netflix. Hot Frosty is actually full of references to the series, including the picture of a Pontiac behind Robinson when he first came in. A reference of course to his nickname in the series, the ‘Pontiac Bandit’.

I’m going to wrap up this slow descent to madness here and let you enjoy the rest of the movie spoiler-free.