While the conceit is absurd — and the budget low — the movie is simply delightful.
In a movie that could only have been made in 2024, Hot Frosty is the unexpected hit of the season. While we politicos were biting our nails, suspensefully awaiting announcements of Trump’s cabinet picks, tens of millions of Americans were snuggled up on their sofas, watching Gretchen Wieners get it on with a snowman. (Don’t worry, this movie is definitely PG.)
Hot Frosty broke records opening weekend — the movie might just be Netflix’s biggest holiday success. And I can understand why. While the conceit is absurd — and the budget low — the movie is simply delightful. (My favorite part of the Hot Frosty story is that the screenplay was written by some guy on a whim.)
The entire movie looks like a running advertisement for Kay Jewelers (which did in fact pay Netflix for advertising slots during the film). “Every Kiss Begins with Kay” . . . or a hot snowman?
While the movie depicts an idyllic wintry town in the Northeast, the snow looks like Styrofoam pellets. (Clearly everyone who made the movie lives in Los Angeles and has never seen snow.) But even in this, the movie teases itself — as the credits roll, the camera pans to the employees holding the snow machine tubes, launching white fluff on the actors while they all dance and sing a little song.
In short, Hot Frosty is the tree-topper of an all-American genre: Hallmark (inspired) Christmas movies. These deliciously cheesy holiday movies feature consistent parts: a girl, a boy, a small town, a happy coincidence, and the magic of Christmas. These films are the Yankee Candles of American cinema — only white women like them, and if you’ve smelled one, you’ve smelled them all.
At least, I would have said as much before I watched Hot Frosty. While the film is set in the fictional small town of “Hope Springs,” where the girl lives, there is a twist. The boy emerges from the realm of pre-sentience, a soul freshly infused into a chiseled, icy human form. (I’ll explain.)
The girl is named Kathy (played by Lacey Chabert, who is famous for portraying Gretchen Wieners in Mean Girls), and she runs an establishment called “Kathy’s Kafé” (obviously). While it is Christmastime in Hope Springs, and the townspeople are happily going about their happy little errands, Kathy is sad and wistful. We soon learn the reason why: Her young husband passed away prematurely.
But Kathy’s destiny quickly takes a whimsical turn. Gifted with a magical scarf from the local wise-woman (who runs a vintage clothing shop), Kathy strolls through the town’s annual snowman/ice-sculpture contest and stumbles across a curious creation. She pauses in front of an especially svelte “snowman,” who looks more like Michelangelo’s David than the typical front-yard three-sphere stack.
Kathy wraps the magical scarf around the snowman’s neck and returns to her freezing home, because her heating is broken (an important plot point). As her deceased husband was a professional handyman, Kathy’s house has been quite literally falling apart without him.
But that is soon to change . . . cue the stock soundtrack for intrigue.
The cameras cut back to the man of snow and the magical scarf: In whooshes a breeze of CGI sparkles, and “Hot Frosty” is made flesh. With only a crucially placed scarf for clothing, the incarnate snowman stumbles around with the wonder of a child. He shocks some locals with his bared physique, then accidentally breaks through the window of the local vintage clothing shop. He dons some galoshes and a jumpsuit inscribed with the name “Jack.”
The movie is so delightful because it toes the line between self-aware and earnest. The film also shirks the woke shackles that have suffocated other fun film projects lately.
In a surprising choice for Netflix, the villain of the story is a black man — the local sheriff who is hard on crime and is especially unforgiving of Jack’s accidental clothing theft. At one point, the antagonist-in-uniform announces: “There’s nothing more dangerous than naked disrespect for law and order.” (So true!)
Besides its pre-2020 casting choices, the film is also nostalgic in its presentation of womanhood. Hot Frosty features #girlboss feminism from 2014, not blue-haired, anti-gender-normativity feminism from 2024. Kathy struggles without her husband. While the Kafé is doing great, her personal life is a wreck. When Jack waltzes into her life she learns — spoiler alert — that she just needed to love herself! With a little bit of chutzpah — and a hot, magical snowman boyfriend — women really can have it all!
Something I immediately noticed watching this film is that gender roles could not have been reversed, in our present day and age. If Hot Frosty had been named “Jill” instead of “Jack,” audiences would have squirmed over an innocent, childlike, beautiful, naked woman roaming the streets of Hope Springs. But if a happy-go-lucky, adolescent-brained man walks naked through the square, who’s going to bat an eyelash?
This gender irreversibility carries throughout the movie. Jack worships Kathy. He wants to be around her, always, and he wants to be like her. He cooks dinner for her, and he beautifies her home. He’s great with kids, forever smiling, and constantly helping others. If the roles were reversed, the movie would have been labeled a misogynist parade in a heartbeat.
Honestly, though, I find the Millennial morals endearing. The movie knows what it’s about, celebrates the magic of Christmas, and honors the beauty of friends, family, and rootedness.
So, if you’re looking for a movie to watch this Christmas season, snuggle up, pour the hot cocoa, and turn on Hot Frosty.