Hot Frosty Takes on The Merry Gentlemen In a Battle of Holiday Movies...
...and we figure out where Outlander left off.
Fellow Broads, in this dark time, there is much for which to be thankful. Sure, sure, health and family and all that jazz. Friends and a roof over your head. Right, right. But I’m talking about something arguably just as vital a cog in the machine of our wellbeing: lowish-budget mid-level celebrity Christmas TV movies. While everything else in this crazy mixed-up world may feel like it’s, uh, drifting out to Garbage Island, this category at least delivers on its promises. This holiday season brings us so many TV Christmas movies — including, later this month, two involving the Kansas City Chiefs! — that it might be difficult for you to narrow down which ones you’re interested in, and while I can’t necessarily help there,1 I can tell you all about two that have gotten the most press so far: Hot Frosty, which sees Lacey Chabert fall in love with a former (literal) snowman played by Ted the Vet from Schitt’s Creek, and The Merry Gentlemen, in which Chad Michael Murray is a Christmas stripper to save a local bar. Which one is right for your movie-watching mood? Read on. Beware: There are spoilers.
HOT FROSTY
Where Can You Watch It? Netflix
Official Logline: “Two years after losing her husband, Kathy magically brings a handsome snowman to life! Through his naïveté, the snowman helps Kathy to laugh, feel and love again, as the two fall for each other just in time for the holidays... and before he melts.”
Actual Plot: That’s pretty close. Kathy, a sweet sad widow with a really cute knitted stocking cap, owns a beloved cafe across the street from her small town’s charming annual Snow Sculpture contest. When the kindly owner of the local vintage shop gives her a magical red scarf, she puts it on a hot, shirtless snowman, and he comes alive2. After a variety of shenanigans — including his being wanted by the law, and then him LITERALLY MELTING TO DEATH — they fall in love even though he is childishly naive, due to having recently been, you know, a snowman. (He is resuscitated, and made human, via true love’s kiss, so don’t worry. He won’t melt again.)
The Setting: This small town is literally named Hope Springs. Everyone there is very nice and apparently extremely open-minded, because they all fairly easily accept that the hot, kind, simple man who has just appeared among them truly is a snowman turned human.
The Cast: Lacey Chabert, our heroine, is VERY likable. Dustin Milligan plays our titular Hot Frosty, and vaguely recalls Brendan Fraser’s work in Encino Man, to which both this project and his performance owe a huge creative debt (complimentary). And he is EXTREMELY muscular right now (also complimentary; my husband, watching with me: “Ted’s been working out.”) Lauren Holly has a small but very effective role as a horny townswoman who drives her vintage convertible into a snowbank when she gets distracted by Hot Frosty’s abs. Joe Lo Truglio is amusing as the town’s deputy sheriff, and the real scene stealer is his former Brooklyn 99 castmate Craig Robinson, who is very funny as the town’s intense sheriff, who also basically (accidentally) melts Hot Frosty to death in his relentless quest for justice. (Oldest story in the book: Hot Frosty becomes human, Hot Frosty has no pants, Hot Frosty robs the vintage shop for propriety’s sake. You know how it goes.) Chrishell Stause has one line and I have to think she originally played a larger role as a Supportive Friend that ended up on the cutting room floor, because I don’t think you pay Chrishell for just one line3.
Fun Facts: Kathy refers to “the Queen of Aldovia” at one point, meaning this film takes place in the A Christmas Prince cinematic universe. She also catches a glimpse of that Lindsay Lohan Netflix movie where LiLo has amnesia, and she says, “That’s so funny. That looks just like a girl I went to high school with,” which is entertaining because, of course, Lohan and Chabert were in Mean Girls together. If you think about it hard enough, Mean Girls and A Christmas Prince therefore exist in the same universe — and Cady Heron grew up to be an actress, which I guess I can buy. She was great in the Christmas talent show! (On the other hand, I think Kathy would have mentioned if her dad invented Toaster Strudel….)
Level of Cheese: Look, the male lead was a LITERAL SNOWMAN, so this movie is fairly cheesy. There is also a choreographed dance routine at a middle school dance, a lot of amusing blocking to conceal Hot Frosty’s original nudity, and a shopping montage that made me laugh out loud, complete with a fairly effective Pretty Woman joke. To be clear, this is good cheese. This is the kind of cheese you should get from a movie called Hot Frosty. They know what they’re doing here.
Festivity Level: Well, I mean… again, the male lead was a snowman and the movie climaxes on Christmas Eve. But all that said, Hot Frosty isn’t aggressively festive — even if Hot Frosty himself does perfect an eggnog recipe and decorate Kathy’s house for her. (He also fixes her leaky roof but encourages her to learn to rely on herself to fix the heater.) (Everything is broken because Kathy’s dead husband was the handy one. Kathy’s dead husband is actually pretty sad so that part wasn’t very festive!) I might say it’s more wintery than Christmas-y?
Overall Rating: Five out of five Christmas cheeseballs. When I wrote this piece, Hot Frosty was the number one most watched thing on Netflix, and this is absolutely correct. Sure, objectively this movie is kinda dumb! Everyone in Hope Springs not only accepts a human snowman, but pitches in to bail him out of jail before he melts, which, again, he does do, if temporarily. But it’s also very heartfelt and sweet and actually legitimately funny. I would happily watch this again.
THE MERRY GENTLEMEN
Where Can You Watch It? Netflix.
Official Logline: “To save her parents’ small-town performing venue, a former big-city dancer decides to stage an all-male, Christmas-themed revue.”