Hot Frosty Review: Netflix's Attempt At A Spicy Christmas Movie Is As Blandly Sweet As Ever

Netflix's Hot Frosty has effectively been branded as part of the opening salvo of a return to form for the streamer's traditionally robust Christmas movie slate, as their platter of holiday offerings in 2023 was empty of major high-concept releases. With the new movie being followed by the Chad Michael Murray-led The Merriest Gentlemen, about a young woman saving her family's venue by putting on a Christmas show featuring male exotic dancers, it has been the streamer's implicit promise that not only are the holidays at Netflix back, they are spicier than ever.

The opening scene of Hot Frosty promises that the movie — which features Schitt's Creek star Dustin Milligan as a hunky snowman who is brought to life by a magical scarf put on him by Lacey Chabert's widowed café owner Kathy — will be different from the typical Christmas movie fluff. In the sequence, a hat reminiscent of the iconic Frosty blows onto a snowman and then into the street, where it is promptly run over. "Take that, family-friendly holiday filmmaking!" it seems to holler. Unfortunately, the movie that follows does not make good on the intro's promise.

Hot Frosty Does Not Use Lacey Chabert To Its Advantage

The Hallmark Star Delivers Another Hallmark Performance

The Netflix Christmas movie has long made attempts to recreate the Hallmark movie formula, though those efforts have generally centered the streamer's own home-grown holiday stars like Vanessa Hudgens (the Princess Switch trilogy, The Knight Before Christmas) or Lindsay Lohan (Falling for Christmas, the upcoming Our Little Secret). Bringing on Hallmark Christmas queen Lacey Chabert to star in her very own release on the platform was a bold move, seemingly meant to use the strange juxtaposition to emphasize how different Hot Frosty is from what we would expect from the typical wholesome fare aired on the cable network.

Unfortunately, Chabert is not asked to give anything more than her typical Hallmark performance. She is tremendously effective at delivering pathos and good cheer under the typical constraints of Hallmark, but the network's truncated production schedules typically require her to play archetypes rather than layered characters. Prickly With a Heart of Gold is a perennial favorite, for example. Here, she pulls from the Grieving Widow and Pillar of the Community buckets, and while she does a good job, the canned wholesomeness of the character doesn't elevate a movie that is in dire need of some grit and heft.

Hot Frosty Is Sweet But Generic

The Movie Only Occasionally Comes To Life

The newest installment in the Netflix holiday movie universe is thankfully, but only somewhat, buoyed by Dustin Milligan's complete full-tilt commitment to his role as the doe-eyed snowman himbo Jack. He pulls off a series of comic moments with aplomb, preventing the generic screenplay from ever feeling too punishingly familiar. While the movie doesn't do enough to subvert the "Born Sexy Yesterday" trope other than gender-swap it, Milligan's warm performance of his cold character does wonders to bring Jack to life. The movie also shows spasms of life elsewhere.

For instance, while Joe Lo Truglio and Craig Robinson are wasted as a pair of unfunny comic relief cops, both have one exemplary moment apiece. However, any fun that is to be had is hard-won by cracking through a calcified crust of bland filmmaking. The cinematography drowns everything in a too-crisp blue-gray digital sheen, while the production design is apathetic at best and actively harmful at worst (the Main Street of a place where "everyone in town" looks to be a crowd of about 30 people has such an impersonally metropolitan look that it's practically brutalist).

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On top of everything, Hot Frosty fails to deliver on its premise. Its title promises something of a raucous Magic Mike good time, but other than brief sequences of various townspeople ogling Jack there is no passion at the movie's core. It's to the point that it barely seems Kathy is aware Jack is attractive at all. Rather than pushing the streamer's holiday content in a unique new direction, the movie delivers a rote, cookie-cutter fish-out-of-water comedy that proves it's really no different from any other high-concept Netflix rom-com.

Hot Frosty is now on Netflix. The film is 92 minutes long and rated TV-PG for language.

5/10

Two years after losing her husband, Kathy magically brings a snowman to life. His innocence and charm help her reconnect with joy and love. As their bond deepens over the holiday season, a budding romance develops, but they are faced with the reality that the snowman will soon melt.

Pros

• Dustin Milligan delivers an endearing himbo performance.
• Certain moments sparkle with good humor.

Cons

• The look of the movie is too bland and digital.
• The movie is too generically wholesome to support its premise.