Jack Frost (1998)

Review Essay

There’s this hack comedy quality just oozing from Jack Frost from the jump — it’s hard to say what it is exactly.  Could it be that the main character is actually named Jack Frost, which we know because he’s a musician in a group called the Jack Frost Band, which we can see displayed prominently behind him, while he sings the lounge lizardiest version of “Frosty the Snowman” I’ve ever heard?  And in the audience an enthusiastic record company exec literally places a cellphone call and tells the person on the other end to “listen to this”, holding the phone up pointed at the stage like someone whose only image of a great concert is from Back to the Future?  Oy.  We haven’t even met the child actors yet, and this is already so painfully a mediocre ‘90s family movie, which, as a kid who grew up in the ‘90s, I sure have a deep experience of as a milieu.

Part of what’s exhausting about the movie — and I’m sure it’s partially because I’m not a kid anymore, I’m a parent, and I see these things differently now — is that in the cinema of the 1990s, few things were worse than a parent whose job was important or demanding enough that they couldn’t devote 100% of their time to teaching their kid how to play hockey or bake cookies.  I mean, Keaton as Jack Frost is not that bad a parent — he’s curious about his kid, he’s been thinking about him while he was away, he prioritizes time with the kid the moment he’s home, including playful midnight snowman building, etc.  Sure, he makes a promise he couldn’t keep, but it just feels like a pretty minor sin in the grand scale of things — but the movie subsequently punishes him by killing him off, and then restoring him to life solely so that he can learn how important it is to self-destructively indulge every wish Charlie has.  Am I reading too much into a screenplay that didn’t honestly think that hard about this?  Sure, I suppose — you can expect more of this kind of overthinking on other films too, I suspect!  I just think that the film already had a pretty massive idea here in the snowman that’s a resurrected human being — lashing that kind of elemental magic to a story this pedestrian just seems so foolish and tedious.

I mean, surely there’s a limit to how many butt jokes you can make in a film and expect to be taken seriously.  Add to that the fact that they take advantage of a major character who’s a snowman to make multiple PG-acceptable (apparently) BALLS jokes?  Like, I guess that’s what a snowman’s constituent elements are — they’re balls?  What am I even talking about anymore?  And the screenwriters know how hack this movie is, since early on in his second, crystalline existence, we even hear Michael Keaton comment on how bad a joke it is that a man named Jack Frost became a snowman after death.  I have to say, fellas, it doesn’t make it less goofy and ill-advised to have you acknowledge it.  But “goofy and ill-advised” are the constant drumbeat of this movie — at one point, Jack Frost tells Charlie, “you da man!” To which his son replies “no, YOU da man!”  To which Jack replies….can you guess?  “NO, I’m da SNOWman!”  I was shocked there wasn’t a laugh track.  Later in the movie, a character says to Jack and his son that “a snowdad is better than no dad.”  That’s a line so howlingly awful that my wife and I have been saying it to each other at every opportunity, ever since I accidentally made her watch this with me.

I will say, though, that I think it’s possible the movie is hampered by factors external to the script — any movie reliant on the naturalism of its child acting performance is likely to have a really rough go of it unless it’s very lucky with casting.  In this one, for instance, Joseph Cross was a kid with some talent — he’s grown up to be a very solid performer in the films I’ve seen, at least.  But as a child actor in Jack Frost, he’s pretty rough — and he’s acting opposite an animatronic/early CGI snowman effect that on the one hand is pretty incredible for the technology at the time, but on the other hand is still pretty limited in its ability to convey Keaton’s emotion and energy.  The movie’s best on-camera performer (once Keaton’s trapped inside Frosty) is Kelly Preston as his wife, but the film’s so engrossed in Jack Frost’s need to fix his allegedly terrible parenting that it pays really no attention to his relationship with his wife, and as a result she’s far too sidelined.  Essentially, I’m arguing, the screenplay was doing no favors of any kind to the movie in the first place, but the premise worked against its ability to put compelling performances on the screen — maybe there are folks out there who feel nostalgia about this (or can still marvel at the snowman: again, it’s honestly pretty cool as a practical effect), but for me, it’s just a reminder of all the ways a movie can go wrong.

I Know That Face: Michael Keaton, of course the leading role here as Jack Frost, is also the title character in Batman Returns — a film that, like Die Hard, is set at Christmastime and has Christmas elements, but was never marketed in that way, yet now it’s amusingly contrarian to claim it’s one of your favorite Yuletide movies.  Hey, you do you.  Andrew Lawrence, who plays Tuck Gronic (one of Charlie’s hockey teammates), voices T.J. Detweiler on Recess Christmas: Miracle on Third Street, as well as directing and co-starring in Mistletoe Mixup, a holiday romance flick involving a couple of other Lawrence brothers, to boot.  Lastly, Mark Addy, who plays Mac MacArthur, the improbably British man who is somehow also a local retail employee in this tiny Colorado mountain town, appears as “Ass” in The Flint Street Nativity, a television movie from Great Britain in which adult actors portray children acting in a school Christmas play.  Ugh, heaven help me, I am intrigued: what a bonkers premise.

That Takes Me Back: Man, the ‘90sness of the film was such a nostalgic rush that picking out individual elements was a bit difficult, ironically.  Things I noticed in particular included the kid needing a bag full of “Game Boy batteries” for his trip to the cabin, him having a lava lamp on his bedside table (what was it about the ‘90s and lava lamps? Did we have some technological leap forward in lava lamps in that era?), snowboarding being treated as something new and edgy, and lastly, having actual independent radio stations where there’s a live local DJ talking to you.  That last one’s sad.

I Understood That Reference: Frosty the Snowman, of course, looms large over this film — it’s the only piece of Christmas media I detected, but we do get a double dose, both of the song (oozing with lounge singer charm) and later a glimpse of the animated Rankin/Bass television special itself in all its tacky glory.

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Holiday Vibes (3.5/10): Jack Frost himself, of course, is a figure who doesn’t really play into any particular holiday pantheon, and this snowman phenomenon doesn’t really play with either the Jack Frost mythology or the idea of Christmas’s magic.  Though the film takes place around the idea of celebrating Christmas, honestly the movie is so busy being a ‘90s kids’ comedy full of bullies and butt jokes that there’s not all that much holiday energy on display?  It’s about as Christmassy as any film set in December in the United States, which is to say, a bit, but not that much.

Actual Quality (3.5/10): Surely I’ve already given you enough commentary on this — it’s a bad movie.  All the good things about it are Michael Keaton trying his best under pretty dire conditions (he’s badly miscast as a relaxed lead singer in a band, and the snowman’s lamentable dialogue has already been referenced) plus a decent adult supporting cast (Preston and Addy have talent, to be sure), and a snowman effect that’s genuinely impressive (while also being creepy and chunky, especially when viewed from the vantage point of 2024).  All of that adds up to a film that still really lacks any reason for existing, let alone for taking 100 minutes of your evening.  If you’re not already pretty deeply nostalgic for this, watch the trailer and you’ll know all that you need to.

Party Mood-Setter? No.  At least I can’t imagine a party that would be enhanced by it — there’s so many better family films that have both better quality and more holiday energy.

Plucked Heart Strings? No!  It’s honestly kind of incredible that a movie about a dad dying on Christmas Day, and then being restored to half-life only to then basically die on Christmas Day…again…somehow never once made me feel emotionally invested, but it really didn’t.  The movie’s tone (and everything else about it) works relentlessly against this.

Recommended Frequency: NO.  Just, no.  If you didn’t already form an attachment to this movie at a young age, I would steer you to so many other, better movies.  I’m not really thrilled I watched the whole thing, and I definitely won’t be touching it again.

Well, friends, if you have cable television (I know, I know, it’s 2024, but SOME of you statistically must still have it!), TNT will stream this to you for free.  You can buy or rent a digital copy from all the usual places — YouTube, Google Play, AppleTV, etc.  Amazon, in addition to renting it to you on Prime, would sell you a DVD copy or, astonishingly, a copy on VHS, of all things.  But, don’t?