Netflix’s Hot Frosty has all the markings of a typical Hallmark or Lifetime holiday romance, with one addition: pecs. Round, bulging, rippling pectoral muscles taking up a disproportionate amount of screen real estate. The rom-com starring Lacey Chabert and Dustin Milligan is a riff on Frosty the Snowman, but the gag is that he’s hot, in case that wasn’t immediately clear. Brought to life by a magical scarf, Hot Frosty brings joy and happiness to pretty much everyone in town, from the horned-up older ladies to the wistful widow, played by Chabert, who thought she might never find love again.
Opening Shot: A silk top hat glides through the air on a wintry breeze, as a narrator explains, “Since the dawn of time, Christmas fairy tales have often included the wonder of a snowman come to life, destined to bring its magic to the right person.” The hat floats down to the ground, landing in the middle of a road where it promptly gets run over by a car. “But those fairy tales have never been told like this,” our narrator adds.
The Gist: Lacey Chabert plays Kathy, the owner of a local diner in the quaint little town of Hope Springs. Recently widowed after her husband Paul was diagnosed with a fast-moving cancer, Kathy’s life has been at a standstill for months. All the little house projects, like fixing her heat, and replacing the leaking roof, those were things that Paul was going to fix. Now that he’s gone, Kathy just hasn’t had the mental energy to address them, and besides, she’s busy running their restaurant. So she sits shivering in her freezing house alone, focused on work and nothing else.
When Kathy brings lunch to her friends who run the local thrift shop, they can see that she’s been struggling and lonely, and they gift her a scarf, telling her, “Good things come to you when you’re out in the cold, Kathy.” It’s a metaphor, but it’s also very, very literal, because later that night, as Kathy is walking through the snow sculptures that people have created in the town square, she plops the scarf around the neck of a snowman. A snowman someone has sculpted with the body of Adonis. While the original Frosty was brought to life because there must have been some magic in that old silk hat they found, Hot Frosty – played by Dustin Milligan who wasn’t nearly this sculpted (was he?) when he played Ted on Schitt’s Creek – is brought to life by this red knit scarf, and boy is he excited to be alive. After Kathy goes home for the night, Hot Frosty, breaks into the thrift shop where he dresses in a stolen pair of coveralls with the name “Jack” patched on to them, and the next day, Kathy finds him in the town square ranting and raving – in a good way, I guess – about how happy he is to be alive.
Kathy takes him in and eventually figures out that this is all her doing – she brought this chiseled specimen to life with her enchanted thrift store scarf. But unfortunately for her and Jack (we’re calling him Jack now), the local police chief and his lackey, played by Craig Robinson and Joe Lo Truglio, are looking for him, since he broke into the thrift store an now he’s wanted for theft. Kathy brings Jack to her house to hide him from the law, telling him not to leave – it’s while he’s holed up here watching Food Network and home repair shows that he learns how to cook and fix her house, and he watches travel shows where he learns about places like Hawaii. It’s like he’s E.T. with that Speak and Spell but on steroids. (Wait, is he on steroids?)
But he’s not content to stay put, so he meets some of Kathy’s neighbors, like Jane (Lauren Holly) who has zero problem ogling Jack and bringing her friends over to do the same. And Jack, now armed with all kinds of construction skills, starts volunteering at the local school where he befriends all the students. But once the law actually catches up to Jack and he’s thrown in jail, it’s a race against time because, you know, he’s a snowman, and he can’t be left in a hot jail cell for too long, otherwise he’ll die. As he languishes in jail, he melts – metaphorically, I mean, he kinda sweats to death, only to be revived when Kathy kisses him. It’s like E.T. when he goes into quarantine and dies, only to be revived by the love Elliot has for him. (Wait, is this movie just E.T.?)
What Movies Will It Remind You Of? Sure, the basic premise is just the classic tale of Frosty the Snowman, but this variation really leans on the way that Jack, whose very existence is the result of an enchantment, adjusts to his presence in our world, not unlike Ariel from The Little Mermaid, whose arrival to terrestrial earth was brought upon by a witches’ spell, or Edward from Edward Scissorhands, a man-made creation whose quiet existence is interrupted by a stay in suburbia.
Our Take: Hot Frosty is a great title for what’s ultimately [just] a pretty good film. As you can tell by all the other films referenced so far in this review, this one owes a lot to many features that came before it, from whimsical romances to fish out of water tales to stories of magic and enchantment, and it really isn’t shy about hitting you over the head with those references. But Hot Frosty has so much more potential and it feels like it was squandered. Robinson and Lo Truglio are the two cast members in this film known for their comedic work, on The Office and with The State and Reno: 911, respectively, and their presence in the film might be the most annoying and un-funny thing about it. While many holiday romances are not If we’re harping on the film’s shortcomings, I’ll just go ahead and say this: for a movie that’s marketing a jacked-up snowman, it’s also just not nearly sexy enough.
But though the film feels like it falls short in some ways, it’s still not just your average holiday romance and it knows exactly what it’s doing, upending the expectations we all have for these somewhat sanitized holiday movies. While yes, it feels like there is a soupçon more skin than you’ll find in your average Hallmark movie, it’s used for comedic effect throughout the film, especially when Lauren Holly’s horny neighbor character gets a load of Jack. And the film features several references to other Netflix content, like when flashes of the films Single All The Way and Falling For Christmas flip across the TV screen, and with Chrishell Stause’s brief cameo. These moments are brief but rewarding and I’m here for the subtle nods to the Netflix Christmas Cinematic Universe. Despite the fact that Hot Frosty doesn’t really turn up the heat, it’s doing its part to expand and even exceed our expectations of typical holiday rom-coms.
Sex and Skin: Hot Frosty is a bit of a tease. For a film whose premise is basically begging us to ogle all the many different muscle groups Dustin Milligan obviously worked hard to achieve, there’s a lot of skin, but not nearly enough sex. If you’re used to Hallmark movies, the amount of bare skin might actually feel titillating. (I am laughing at the fact that in the recently-released ‘Tis The Season To Be Irish, the main characters partake in a traditional Christmas swim in the Irish Sea and remain fully clothed to do so, that’s just the network’s commitment to never-nudity.) But if you’re hoping that this Christmas romance will feature Chabert caressing those pecs or, really, any other touching of any kind, you’ll be disappointed.
Parting Shot: After Kathy gifts Jack tickets to Hawaii for Christmas, the two pack up their car and head to the airport together. (The movie then provides a bonus scene of Craig Robinson and Joe Lo Truglio singing a sing about their town over the credits. I’m guessing this was fully improvised, but whether it was scripted or off the cuff, it’s not nearly as fun or funny as it should be.)
Performance Worth Watching: A quick word of warning – despite the fact that Chrishell Stause is listed in the credits, her appearance is literally a blink-and-you-miss-it moment. The film does have some fun supporting characters though, including a fun turn from Lauren Holly as a horned-up neighbor (think Kathy Baker as Joyce in Edward Scissorhands) who can’t stop leering at Jack, and Katy Mixon as the local doctor who doesn’t bat an eye when Kathy explains that Jack is a snowman brought to life.
Memorable Dialogue: Jack’s obsession with TV means that there are a few funny channel-surfing moments in the film, including one where Kathy pauses to watch a scene from Lindsay Lohan’s 2022 Netflix film Falling For Christmas. As Kathy stares at Lohan, she says, “That’s so funny, that looks just like a girl I went to high school with.” What’s not to love about a good Mean Girls reference?
Our Call: STREAM IT. I definitely wish that Hot Frosty pushed the envelope a little more in several ways. Alas, even though it plays it safe on all fronts, it’s got enough quirky, silly charm to make it worth your time.
Liz Kocan is a pop culture writer living in Massachusetts. Her biggest claim to fame is the time she won on the game show Chain Reaction.