Review of Jack Frost (1998) by Heather M — 11 Dec 2011

A more "emotional" holiday flick that ends up being saccharine and disjointed. It's more chilly than heartwarming.

A musician is in a blues band, and ironically isn't around the family he's trying to support with his career much. This poses a dilemma, and when he tries to turn back on his record deal on Christmas to come home, he... is no longer alive, leaving wife and child devastated. A year later, he magically comes back as a snowman to help his hopeless son move on and be the better dad he never was before.

First off, the CG is bad, making for a pitifully rendered snowman. Seriously. To think about it, the undertones of this movie are just creepy. See the movie to know what I mean. If you dare. Cheesy acting with worse dialogue, unconvincing set pieces, and sappy crap are atop the incredulously fake snow*. Not to mention, the ending is shamelessly stolen from "Ghost".

*The snow in most movies is fake anyways; however, in the majority of them, production values were high enough so the effect of it seeming real succeeds. In this movie... not at all.

However, surprisingly, it's not a disaster. Simply less than worthwhile. I can relate to the 'dead dad' stuff. Michael Keaton, as trapped as he is in this sh*tstorm, is the saving grace here, even making the corny one-liners kinda effective. And it manages to show its softer side, so it's not completely soulless. Though I suppose the horror video with the same title, which was released around the same time, would be more entertaining?

Fails as a family film, and pans out as one of the more bizarre Christmas films out there (top prize for that goes to "Santa Claus Conquers the Aliens", just for its title alone), it's just off-putting and has no place in Santa's nice list. Maybe instead of a lump of coal, your naughty arse should be punished with this film. Hey, there are worse though... much, much worse...

And don't be asking Santa for "Skyrim", because you won't get it, since you've been such a naughty person. Perhaps he'll give you 100 hours of cheerless Christmas movies to log through! Ha!