I can’t believe I lived life thinking I ever knew happiness, had experienced fulfillment, or felt stimulated at all before I watched Hot Frosty on Netflix.
The holiday film surged to the top of the streamer’s most-watched movies charts this, as it should have—though I am morally opposed to the Christmas season and its accompanying deluge of movies arriving this far before Thanksgiving.
I admit to being fairly new to the cheesy holiday rom-com genre, having been staunchly Grinch about their borderline cynical lack of quality or ambition. But having recently been in dire need of my heart growing three sizes, I’ve begun dabbling, and I have to say: I can’t believe so many of you watch like 40 of these a year, and, until now, not one has involved a sexy naked snowman.
Hot Frosty is absolutely absurd and awful, and I can’t recommend it enough.
The film stars Lacey Chabert, the world’s foremost expert in acting while mummified in a tangle of sweaters, scarves, and throw blankets. Her skin is one with crocheted wool. She plays Kathy, a widow who is neglecting her own life as she runs a diner, leaving her well-meaning neighbors to care for her. One of those neighbors thinks she needs to open herself up to love again, gifting her a magical scarf that she thinks will help Kathy meet the man of her dreams.
“Good things come to you when you’re out in the cold, Kathy,” she says. And yet when I was freezing my butt off while walking home last night, I saw a man s--t on the sidewalk. I digress.
Kathy passes a collection of snowmen that were built in the town square. Inexplicably, someone carved a naked, chiseled snowhunk alongside the traditional bulbous stacks. There is no explanation for this. Kathy is struck by this frozen Adonis, and notices that he, unlike his fatty friends, doesn’t have a scarf. So she wraps her new magical one around him.
You can pretty much guess what follows: He comes to life, now as Jack (Schitt’s Creek’s Dustin Milligan).
Turns out even snowmen are born in their birthday suits. Hot Frosty gives Austin Powers a run for its money in strategically obscured nudity, as Jack streaks through town wearing nothing but his new scarf. It may be my favorite holiday scene of all time. He’s hot! Milligan appears to have worked out 12 hours a day on a diet of one lentil per meal for this. You know how the song goes: “Frosty the snowman / Was a jolly, happy soul / With his vascular arms and no body fat / and a mouth of teeth too white.”
Jack lifts some clothes from a local store and finds Kathy, who quickly accepts at face value the fact that she brought a snowman to life and takes him in. He swiftly endears himself to her, learning how to do things like cook and make the house repairs she’s been neglecting. He also, inadvertently, helps her confront her emotional trauma from her husband’s death, owed to the greatest line of dialogue in this year of cinema: “Earlier today I was checking the house for vampires. I went downstairs. What’s cancer?”
The sheriff is after Jack because it turns out that streaking and stealing clothes is a crime. But while the search is on, Jack endears himself to everyone in the town. When it comes time for Kathy and Jack to come clean, nobody blinks. They are on board IMMEDIATELY. “It’s Christmas!” one person says, justifying why they believe it so quickly. A man that sweet has gotta be magic, don’t you think?” says another.
A 10/10 movie. No notes. I don’t know what’s in store for the rest of the holiday movie season, besides two (!!!) Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce-themed rom-coms, but the bar for glorious lunacy has been set high. And you better believe that all winter, whenever I see one of those weirdo men walking down the street in a t-shirt even though it’s freezing out, I’m gonna start chasing them with a scarf.
