Butt News Movie Club #34: Hot Frosty

The True Meaning of Christmas Is Teaching a Newborn Snowman About Cancer and Then Bailing Him Out of Prison for Sex

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Also, a couple things: I’m back on CAMEO! I’m also teaching an online master class in February called “How to Be Funny When You’re Sad,” if you have any aspiring memoirists in your life whom you really really love!]

A rare peek behind the curtain of making Butt News: it’s a slow process. It takes a loooooooong time to squeeze this juice out of my brain’s butt! You can’t rush it—that’s how you get hurt. Just watching the movie for a Butt News takes at least 2x the runtime, because I have to pause it every five seconds to take a picture of the screen or rewind to transcribe horrible dialogue. Butt News is LABOR. Fortunately, I love it!

However, I made the mistake of watching Hot Frosty for “fun” with my family before I decided I needed to do it for Butt News, thus depriving myself of the main thing that makes the Butt News labor enjoyable: the thrill of the new and unexpected. It’s fun to make fun of a movie with your friends when you don’t know what stupid thing is going to happen next. It’s less fun to watch a movie AGAIN to take notes and try to recapture the jokes you made last time when you DO know what stupid thing is going to happen next! By yourself! During the day! Like a JOB! Fortunately, I love you!

Watching Hot Frosty twice in one week has impacted my life in the following ways: 1) Ahamefule had to miss several basketball games because I was monopolizing the TV, which is a tragedy because there are only 1230 NBA games per year; and 2) it hornswoggled my algorithm, which is now VERY confused (or… correct?) about my interests and wheedled me down a stony path that ended at 4 am on a Sunday night having watched in succession The Merry Gentlemen, Love Hard, Our Little Secret, AND Irish Wish (not a Xmas movie in body but a Xmas movie in spirit) without even getting up to pee or poop. The line between pleasure and pain is whisper-thin!

So, HOT FROSTY.

A magical top hat blows into town, which I confess I didn’t notice on my first viewing, and you know what? That detail enhanced the movie for me! The first time around I was constantly like “why the fuck is this snowman randomly magic,” and I don’t know why my walnut brain thinks “magic top hat” is a satisfying explanation (who made the TOP HAT MAGIC, bestie!?!?!), but it just works!

As the top hat flies around, a voiceover claims that “since the dawn of time, Christmas fairy tales have often included the wonder of a snowman coming to life, destined to bring its magic to the right person.” Since the DAWN OF TIME???? R u sure??

The top hat lands on a snowman, magically, then blows into the street where it is humorously run over by a car. I love it when a movie’s not afraid to get cheeky!

Voiceover: “But those fairy tales have never been told like THIS.”

It’s true—when the primordial amoebae told THEIR Christmas fairy tales about the wonder of a snowman coming to life and bringing its magic to the right prokaryote, no one EVER had sex with the snowman after! Probably because they reproduce asexually via binary fission, but also because they didn’t have the vision of screenwriter Russell Hainline! Or any vision, probably, even rudimentary light-detecting protruberances.

An alarm clock is going off in a house. It’s 7:10 am. It’s Lacey Chabert’s house! She’s asleep. The alarm clock radioman reminds Lacey Chabert that it’s another beautiful morning here in Hope Springs and today is the day of the “annual snow sculpture competition” so people should “grab those kiddos” and head to the town square. Preferably your own, not other people’s!

At first you think Lacey Chabert must be poor as hell because her house is very cold and full of dangerous industrial space heaters that she leaves on 24/7 even when she goes to work, and she has a broken stair that she hops over, and there’s a post-it stuck on the thermostat that says “CALL REPAIRMAN TODAY!” and the ceiling is leaking, and there are buckets everywhere, and her kitchen looks like shit.

The camera pans over a framed picture of Lacey Chabert with her AI husband who, we can extrapolate, must be dead, since we know from the poster she’s going to hook up with a snowman later (and this is Hot Frosty, not Hotwife Frosty!). Ohhh, that’s why the house sucks so bad—Lacey isn’t broke, she’s depressed about her husband dying! Plus, she doesn’t have a man around to fix things anymore, and that’s not something hetero women can do on our own, which is why unmarried women’s apartments famously always look like dogshit while unmarried men’s apartments are always flawlessly appointed.

She drives her 1978/1989 Toyota Corolla to the idyllic Hope Springs town square, and why did they make this her car?? That is such a specific car! Anyway, cute!

Lacey Chabert, whose name in the movie is Kathy, arrives at her restaurant, Kathy’s Kafe, and says hello to Chef Isaac, a pillar of the community who is holding this whole operation together singlehandedly. BTW, movie, you could have just spelled Kathy’s name with a C and made it Cathy’s Cafe, so that Chef Isaac, one of only three Black people in the county as far as I can tell, wouldn’t have to work in a restaurant with an unsettling number of konsecutive Ks!!! IF YOU KARE.

Anyway, Kathy walks up to Isaac and goes, “We’re going to be slammed today. I hope you’ve had your coffee.” Yeah, he knows! YOU JUST GOT THERE, KATHY. THIS MAN HAS BEEN MAKING PANCAKES FOR HOURS. Kathy starts warming her hands over the burner so Isaac asks if she got her heat fixed yet, because he is not only an incredible chef but also an elite friend who pays attention and follows up. Kathy promises she’ll call the heat repairman tonight. Isaac says, “You’re not gonna make it to Christmas if you turn to ice before then.” Wow, he’s a doctor as well!!!

A lady comes in with her daughter and the daughter is like “MISS KATHY I WANT CHOCOLATE CHIP PANCAKES” and Kathy is like, well, chocolate chip pancakes are usually only for Sunday brunch but maybe Miss Kathy can make an exception. Why would chocolate chip pancakes need to be a special if you already have pancakes on the daily menu?? Just throw some chips on there! It’s easy!

Outside the kafe, we get a conspicuous shot of an ATM for no reason. It’s Chekov’s ATM! Hold that thought for an hour!

Kathy goes over to the downtown doo-dad store where the store lady tells her a very pointed story about how SHE used to be single like Kathy but then one day she put on her favorite scarf and went to the bar and met her husband and now they own a doo-dad store together. She gives Kathy a scarf for Xmas because it reminds her of her magic sexual romance scarf, wink, and Kathy’s like, “I really don’t need it,” a rude thing to say but also I’m sure it’s true! Like, I have too many scarves and it doesn’t even snow here!

Doo-Dad Lady: “Good things come when you’re out in the cold, Kathy.”

WHAT??

Kathy goes to look at the snow sculptures for the snow sculpture contest. There are two regular snowmen and then a NUDE MAN SNOWMAN. END OF COMPETITION. No one else entered, I guess??

Kathy walks up to this anatomically correct snow-SLUT and says, “You know what? You keep it,” and drapes the scarf around his neck, like he asked to borrow it or something (why would SNOW need to keep WARM). She snaps a photo of him on her phone and trudges home. From somewhere outside of time and space (sex heaven??), mystical chimes tinkle.

Again! Rude!! Girl, they JUST gave you that scarf as a gift and their store is ten feet away and this snow sculpture contest is the hottest attraction in town! They will definitely notice! It’s like when you guilt yourself into taking restaurant leftovers you don’t want. Everyone knows you gotta wait at least a block or two before dumping those in the trash, for when your server goes outside and checks all the nearby garbage cans to make sure you weren’t an ungrateful liar!

Then there’s a magic twinkling snow flurry and HOT FROSTY COMES TO LIFE. He looks insane. He is so pale and gaunt and he is ONLY wearing the scarf, which fortunately has been knitted with magic penis-clinging properties.

Newborn Hot Frosty stumbles around the town square. He sees an advertisement featuring a group of people in “mistletoe mode” i.e. wearing clothes, and this gets him thinking. He de-activates the penis cling technology and throws the scarf jauntily over his shoulder, the way the people in mistletoe mode are wearing their scarves. The streets are deserted, but an elderly couple walking their dog (what time is it????????) observe Hot Frosty’s penis. The old lady likes it but her husband does not like it as much.

Old Man (falling down, possibly breaking a hip, leading to an inexorable decline for which Hot Frosty would surely be culpable): “What was that?”

Old Woman (horny): “I’m not sure. Let’s investigate.”

Hot Frosty notices the doo-dad store and yells “CLOTHES!” and it would have been better writing for him to yell “mistletoe mode,” but maybe the producers didn’t trust us to remember that from six seconds ago? (Regardless, how does he know ANY words?)

Hot Frosty is startled by the old people’s dog and falls backwards through the doo-dad store’s plate glass window in a shower of jagged glass shards. He is unharmed. Hot Frosty steals a sleeveless mechanic’s onesie and some boots and puts them on with no socks (disgusting). He knows how to read and he understands the concept of “clothes” but not the concept of burglary? Why? What are the rules of this magical system??

The next morning, Kathy parks her kar outside the Kafe and notices a chittering freak hyping up the snowmen: “I have arms and I can move my arms and I have a mouth, I can talk! I love talking! If it happened to me, it can happen to you!”

THE OTHER SNOWMEN DO HAVE ARMS AND MOUTHS!

Kathy goes over to see if this weirdo needs an ambulance and he’s like, “Look! It’s me! Look what happened! I was made of snow and now I’m made of not-snow. Do you believe it?” and she’s like ooooooookayyyyy and invites him to the diner for some food.

Hot Frosty: “I have never had food before. Is that okay?”

That’s always a good bit! When the time traveler/alien/sexual snowman doesn’t know about normal human things? I’ll take two!

Isaac asks Kathy if they need to call the cops because Hot Frosty is sitting at the counter eating the jams and jellies out of the little tubs, which, to be fair, WOULD be very good if you’d never had food before!

She says no, because Sheriff Hunter “overreacts about everything.” (Also maybe because it’s not illegal to enjoy jams and jellies??) Then Kathy and Isaac have this exchange, which irritated me as a writer:

Kathy: “He arrested someone at the movies once.”

Isaac: “For what?????”

Kathy: “Excessive candy unwrapping. Apparently it was a noise violation.”

I’m not going to be able to explain this but I’m going to try (and let me warn you—even if I succeed, it’s NOT gonna be worth it). It fucks up the joke to have Isaac ask “for what?” all incredulous in the middle of it! Because it implies that arresting someone at the movies is, on its face, an unreasonable thing to do, as though there could not be any rational reason to arrest someone at the movies, thus inspiring Isaac to ask the clarifying question “for what?” and further implying if Isaac hadn’t asked “for what?” Kathy would have left the story at “he arrested someone at the movies once,” even though that IN NO WAY indicates that Sheriff Hunter overreacts about everything! Do you see what I mean???? A better construction would have been, “He once arrested someone at the movies for excessive candy unwrapping.” “He what???” “Apparently it was a noise violation.” I AM SO SORRY ABOUT THIS PARAGRAPH.

Sheriff Hunter (Craig Robinson) is over at the doo-dad store investigating the broken window and monkeysuit burglary. He is ashamed that anyone would commit galoshes theft under his watch! The store owners say it’s fine, they do not wish to press charges, they are not stressed about it at all, the thief can keep the galoshes. Seems like it should be case closed, but Craig Robinson can’t abide rule-breaking: “There WILL be consequences.” Does he even get to decide that if they weren’t his galoshes?

Meanwhile at the diner, Kathy’s trying to get some info out of Hot Frosty. He says he doesn’t know what his name is, so she decides that his first name should be Jack because that’s what it says on his monkeysuit and his last name should be Snowman because lol. Jack says the last thing he remembers is Kathy putting the scarf on him and then shining a bright light in his eyes. He asks if they can leave the diner because he is very hot but when Kathy touches his forehead he is notably cold.

At the police station, Craig Robinson sings a song about crime while his deputy, Joe LoTruglio, takes a phone call. Then they do one of my most favorite kinds of joke:

Joe LoTruglio: “Another crime last night. Streaking. A man running naked in the plaza around one. Old Mortimer and Ethel Jennings saw him while walking their dog.”

Craig Robinson: “Description?”

JLT: “Small, fluffy, pointy little nose.”

Craig: “The streaker, Ed!”

LMAO!!!!!!!!!!!!

I gotta give Hot Frosty some credit. As mentioned above, I also watched Our Little Secret this week, which similarly had Chris Parnell and Tim Meadows in supporting roles, and while I enjoyed that stupid movie too it gave those legends absolutely ZIP ZERO ZILCH to do! Not one joke! Hot Frosty is 100% pure silly goose behavior but Craig Robinson and JoeLo at least get to shine!

JoeLo explains that Old Mortimer forgot his glasses so he couldn’t give a clear description of the streaker, and Ethel refused to narc because she said the streaker was “doing a public service” (PENIS).

Craig Robinson opines that the #1 way people would describe him is “hard on crime” and that’s why everyone in Hope Springs is too scared to even park wrong (sounds fun!). He reasons that two crimes in one day must be some kind of smear campaign.

Craig Robinson: “Six weeks before my reappointment as sheriff, we have a crime spree on our hands? Coincidence or conspiracy?”

He thinks the mayor has had it in for him ever since he had the mayor’s car towed for parking in the loading zone while delivering presents to the children’s hospital. JoeLo counters that the mayor would never go streaking because he has a bad hip. Craig says he’s going to bring this naked man to justice whether he’s the mayor or not.

Since Jack can’t stop sweating (same), Kathy takes him to the doctor (Katy Mixon, a vision as always!) who says HUBBA HUBBA AOOGA.

I should say real quick that I’ve seen some discourse about Hot Frosty (Ted from Schitt’s Creek) not being hot enough to play a character named Hot Frosty, and I think part of the problem is that it seems like someone told the actor to lose 45 pounds when he only had negative-ten pounds to spare. He is LEATHER, BONES, AND TEETH. However, especially upon my second watch, I think Ted has the right vibe! Hot Frosty isn’t supposed to be a sex diva—he’s a Christmas naif who doesn’t know what food is! Do you know how boring the male leads are in some of these holiday rom-coms? Well, I do¹, and Hot Frosty is not boring. I find myself convinced by his childlike wonder! Sorry!

Kathy: “He says he doesn’t remember anything before last night.”

Doctor Katy Mixon: “That’s not good.”

Hot Frosty: “I was a snowman.”

The doc takes his temperature and it is below 30 degrees, which normally for a human means dead. She assumes her thermometer is broken but then the other thermometer says the same thing! I wonder what a real doctor would do in this situation. Probably send him to the big city research hospital? Certainly NOT send him home with Kathy to learn the meaning of Christmas!

Kathy shows DKM the picture she took of the hot snowman wearing her scarf, which Hot Frosty is now also wearing. Conspicuous!

Doctor Katy Mixon: “So he’s saying this is him? And he came to life?”

Kathy: “Yes! And that snowman is gone now!”

Doctor Katy Mixon: “Maybe he’s telling the truth.”

Kathy: “Sure. Right. And I’m the Queen of Aldovia.”

I ALSO WATCHED ALL THREE CHRISTMAS PRINCE MOVIES LAST WEEKEND AND SO I GET THIS REFERENCE.²

Then Doctor Katy Mixon drops this absolutely insane non-advice: “Look, everything about Christmas—Santa, elves, flying reindeer—the scientist in me knows they shouldn’t exist. But wouldn’t the world be a little bit better if they did?”

WOULD IT? WOULD FLYING REINDEER MAKE THE WORLD BETTER??

Kathy rationalizes that the simplest explanation is that “he’s a drifter with severe memory loss” who trashed the hot snowman and stole the scarf and also coincidentally there are “factory-wide defects at the thermometer company.”

Doctor Katy Mixon: “Or…”

Kathy: “He’s a snowman.”

Doctor Katy Mixon: “And how COOL would that be??”

We literally know! Thirty degrees! You just took his temperature! SMH!

Doctor Katy Mixon tells Jack that he can come stay with her at her house (for sex) but he says he wants to stay with Kathy because he trusts her because she brought him to life by putting the scarf on him. (Was it the scarf or was it the top hat? Are they working together??) He says he thinks the scarf is keeping him alive “so technically I’ve known you for my entire life.” Kathy asks if Jack wouldn’t prefer to stay in a nice hospital bed and have his head examined, and he looks sooooooooooo sad, like my dog when you tell him he can’t drink the bacon grease, so she says okay FINE he can come stay at her house and drink all the bacon grease he wants.

This brings up one of my fundamental issues with Hot Frosty: WHO THE FUCK MADE THE SNOWMAN IN THE FIRST PLACE AND ENTERED HIM IN THE SNOW SCULPTURE CONTEST? Where is that person? Are they mad someone sex-trafficked their snowman? Doesn’t Jack have any curiosity about his maker? Aren’t they his real mom, not Kathy?? Like how Jack Pumpkinhead considers Ozma his mother in Return to Oz? I guess Jack Pumpkinhead also calls Dorothy “mom” because she reassembles him after Mombi takes him apart and throws him in the attic, but he makes it clear that Dorothy is only a surrogate mother while Ozma is incarcerated inside Mombi’s magic mirror #LoveAfterLockup. What I’m saying is that Kathy is Hot Frosty’s Dorothy AT BEST and at worst she’s arguably his Mombi!

Even more pressing, though, WTF happened with the snow sculpture competition?? Who won???? Can you imagine if you sculpted an anatomically correct life-size man out of snow WITH SNOW ABS and then the town never even bothered to announce a winner because everyone got parasocially infatuated with KKK-Kathy’s new boyfriend? I swear to god I’d move.

Kathy drops Jack off at home and tells him to watch TV and eat food but he doesn’t really know what either of those things are, let alone how to use a remote control. Kathy turns on the TV for him and they show a brief clip from Falling for Christmas, that Lindsay Lohan movie from 2022 where she gets Christmas amnesia, and Kathy says, “That’s so funny, that looks just like a girl I went to high school with,” making it both a Mean Girls easter egg and a Netflix Holiday Rom-Com Extended Universe easter egg.

Kathy switches the channel to a cooking show and Hot Frosty goes, “This is what you do!” B-word, no she doesn’t! She signs Isaac’s checks and takes all the credit! Kathy says that she used to do some cooking before her husband died but now she never does. She even used to write recipes, such as a sweet potato casserole that they still make every Christmas Eve at the diner and the entire town loves it. Wow, brag much???????????

Hot Frosty gets really excited and says, “I’m so excited to be here. I love this house and I love you,” and Kathy gets MAD AT HIM even though he essentially has the mind of a frozen child. She’s like, “You can’t just go around telling people you love them, because it doesn’t make it special anymore,” which isn’t actually true, so don’t believe it! Kathy, I know you’re jaded about your dead husband, but could you just let Hot Frosty have this??

Kathy tells Jack that he can learn a lot from watching TV, and he replies it’s very hot in her house so is it okay if she turns off the nuclear heat lamp? Kathy goes to leave and Jack says, “I still don’t understand how all of this is happening but I am so glad that you are the one who found me.”

Unnamed Person Who Lovingly Sculpted Jack’s Every Angle with Frostbitten Fingers: “What am I, chopped jams and jellies?????”

Back at the cafe the cops come in to do some investigating. Craig Robinson says that the criminal must be from out of town because otherwise he would know that Craig Robinson is tough on crime and never DARE to show his penis near another man’s galoshes.

Craig Robinson: “I do not tolerate funny business.”

Meanwhile, Jack watches TV all day and eats a bowl of ice to stay cool.

He watches Nosferatu (the old one) and becomes afraid, hiding behind the couch and making a cross out of two sticks. Why would he know to make a cross out of two sticks to keep vampires away? WHAT DOES HE KNOW?

Then Jack decides to go down in the basement and mess with all of Kathy’s stuff. He finds the Christmas decorations. He finds the box of dead husband cancer files written in this classic font that doctors love:

Eventually Kathy comes home and thinks Jack is going to kill her with a rolling pin (reasonable!). She brings him a new bag of clothes and he starts to strip off his monkeysuit so he can try on the clothes and she says NO and teaches him the rules of penis. Then she starts asking the tough questions: “Did you streak past old Mortimer Jennings?” Jack doesn’t know what that means, and Kathy says he needs to start being careful because the sheriff has him on his radar.

Jack: “I’m on his radar?”

How does he know what radar is? WHAT DOES HE KNOOOOOW????

Kathy tells Jack to lay low, so he drops and lays down on the floor. Okay, Amelia Bedelia!!

Jack tells Kathy he has a surprise for her in the kitchen—he’s making pizza and egg nog because he learned it from TV! Kathy says that Isaac cooks dinner for her every night but she can’t remember the last time she cooked for herself.

Then Jack’s like, “What’s cancer?” and it’s giving Walker-told-me-I-have-AIDS.

Kathy: “Jack, it’s, um, it’s not a nice thing that happens to some people.”

Jack: “And that’s what happened to Paul?”

Kathy: “Yeah. And it just happened so fast. You know?”

Kathy says the tools in the basement were Paul’s and he used them to do home repairs. That’s why the house is falling apart now, because Kathy doesn’t do home repairs.

Jack asks Kathy to put the pizza in the oven because he does not like the oven due to being a snowman. She offers him a fresh pizza slice and he declines because the hot pizza melts his body to death, but he made another pizza earlier and put it in the fridge so he can eat it. (HOW DID YOU PUT THAT ONE IN THE OVEN?)

Kathy: “Cold pizza’s great. I ate a ton of it in college.”

A certified weird thing to say!

THEN THEIR HANDS TOUCH AS THEY BOTH REACH FOR THE PIZZA CUTTER. It’s obvious that the SEX ROMANCE is officially ON even though Jack is a BABY with an ICE PENIS.

They settle in to watch a TV show about Hawaii and Jack is like, “Let’s go there!” but Kathy shits on his parade yet again, explaining that people who just met don’t go on vacation together and it’s expensive and also it’d be too hot for him and he’d melt. Ma’am, sometimes you can just say, “Yeah, sure, sounds nice!”

Jack vows to figure out how to go to Hawaii some day and gives Kathy a hug, which she is weird about: “Sorry, I’m just not much of a hugger.” Due to her grief she has developed cancer of the hug bone.

Jack asks what he should do tomorrow and Kathy says he should continue to hide in the house and do absolutely nothing. She goes to bed. He stays up and watches a video about home repair, then he notices Kathy’s leaky roof. Hmm!!!!!!!

The next day Jack is topless on the roof fixing the leak when Lauren Holly (I missed you!) drives by. She is so distracted by his abs that she drives into a drifted bank and gets UPSOT ALL TO HELL. Jack rushes over to help, because he is nice.

Jack: “Do you want me to get behind you and push?”

Lauren Horny: “YES.”

She asks how he is with wiring and electricity and he says, “If it’s on TV, I can learn it.”

This is when we learn that Jack has two superpowers: being made of snow and learning anything he sees on TV. Yeah, sure, sounds nice! (See, Kathy? It’s not that hard!)

Jack goes over to Lauren Holly’s house and installs a light fixture while her book club watches, squirting. He asks if the horny ladies need help with anything else and they freak the fuck out. One lady says that her son Brendon is principal at the middle school and they just lost their maintenance staff and they could really use some help setting up for the school dance (Jesus, I don’t know that many details about my OWN JOB). The horny women give Jack a ride to the diner to meet up with Kathy. Craig Robinson sees him through the window and identifies him as the only stranger in town. He comes in to investigate! Jack is suspiciously eating a bowl of ice cubes, like a sex criminal would do.

Craig Robinson: “Why is there no beverage for that ice, Jack?”

Jack: “Because I like to eat the ice, sheriff.”

Then they have an ice chewing contest while JoeLo watches.

Craig Robinson: “You seem sweaty. A little hot in here for you?”

SORRY, DOES HE SUSPECT THAT JACK IS A SNOWMAN BROUGHT TO LIFE????

After the cops leave, Jack sadly tells Kathy that if he did crimes then maybe he should go to jail and Kathy yells, “You can’t handle jail! You can’t handle ten minutes in a lukewarm diner!” I confess I LOL’d!

Kathy reiterates that Jack has to ACTUALLY lay low tomorrow and stay out of Lauren Holly’s tailpipe or else face certain death in prison.

Jack: “I can’t, because I got a job doing maintenance at the middle school.”

YOU DID??

WITHOUT AN ID?????

AS A PERSON OF INTEREST IN AN ONGOING SEX CRIME INVESTIGATION!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

Kathy is PO’d about this and tells Jack he has to cancel. They have their first fight. He says he’s not going to let the kids down. He’s definitely going to the school tomorrow.

Kathy: “You can go melt in a jail cell. What do I care? I’ve known you a day and a half.”

Jack goes into his bedroom, feeling sad. Kathy goes into the living room and discovers that Jack fixed the roof and decorated for Christmas AND he fixed the rotten step! She goes to apologize and finds Jack engrossed in Single All the Way. Now he knows how to be Jennifer Coolidge!

Kathy says thanks for doing all that stuff and Jack says “I was just doing what I saw on TV.” He explains that he has to go hang out at the middle school because he doesn’t know wtf is going on re: being alive and “I could wake up tomorrow and be a puddle,” so he just wants to YOLO and make the most of the time he has while he’s here, i.e. mop up Mr. Beast Lunchable puke in the lunchroom.

Kathy says “okay” but gives him some ground rules: “You don’t leave the school. You don’t tell anyone you’re a snowman.” Fair! It’s a great time for a montage!

Jack goes to school and instantly assimilates because he has the mind of a middle schooler. He and Kathy bake Christmas cookies and she eats a snowman’s head and he makes this face:

Kathy goes to pick Jack up after work and he is basically running the school. He knows all the children and their gossip.

They have a heart-to-heart. Kathy mentions that Jack is both nice and good-looking and he says WAIT, YOU THINK I’M GOOD-LOOKING? and she says the whole town loves him and he’s like well YOU’RE part of the town so that must mean that YOU LOVE ME and she’s like NO even though SORRY, KATH, HE GOT UR ASS.

Kathy explains the word love just isn’t her vocabulary right now, because her life is a big mess: “I am not convinced that I can really love someone right now, because I’m not convinced I have figured out how to love myself without Paul.”

Hot Frosty takes this all in. He says that Paul wouldn’t want this amazing person to think that she’s anything less than amazing, and honestly, that’s very sweet, but on the other hand, YOU WERE JUST BORN.

Kathy: “I’m getting grief counseling from a snowman.”

Jack: “No, you’re just talking to a friend.”

I’m with Kathy on this one!

They’re driving home through town when Jack notices a big new pane of glass being delivered to the doo-dad store. He makes Kathy stop the car and she’s like wait—Jack, did you order that replacement glass for the doo-dad store? He’s like yeah I ordered it on something called the internet and I guess they were having some kind of giveaway because it was FREE and Kathy explains about how her credit card is on auto-fill and Jack’s like “oh noooooo” but HOW DOES HE KNOW WHAT CREDIT CARDS ARE??????????? HOOOOOOOOOW???

Kathy says it’s chill, though, because she’s not actually poor—just depressed.

Jack asks to be dropped off to help with the glass installation and she reminds him yet again to lay low and then leaves him there. Instead of laying low, of course, Jack runs inside and confesses: “I did it. I broke your window and I stole your clothes and I was alone and I was naked. I thought that you should know. So, I’m sorry about the damage. And I hope the glass helps. I’ll install that for you and everything.”

The doo-dad proprietors tell Jack to keep the clothes.

Jack: “You’re not mad?”

Doo-Dad Lady: “Nobody can be mad at Christmas. You needed clothes, you did what you had to, and now you’re making it right.”

But he didn’t explain why he did it AT ALL! How do you know he “needed” clothes??

Outside the diner, JoeLo runs up to Kathy and shows her a composite sketch of the sex offender and says it looks exactly like Jack. l m a oooooo.

He says they got it from Mortimer’s description—they tried to get a description from Ethel “but we needed one of his face.” ANOTHER CLASSIC JOKE!!!

Kathy lures JoeLo into the diner with soup to keep him from noticing Jack installing the glass. (Sorry, but there are not TV shows that show you how to do commercial plate glass window installation!)

Kathy: “How does a bowl of soup sound?”

Joe LoTruglio: “How does a bowl of soup sound? [makes bubbling noises]”

ANOTHER PERFECT JOKE THAT I LIKE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Jack overhears one of his best friends from school (child) asking a girl to the dance and he is both proud and impressed. He wants to ask someone to the dance too!

At the police station, Craig Robinson is staring at his Jack-themed yarn board. “I just wish I had a photo of Jack.” Then Jack walks in! Craig Robinson asks to take his photo and Jack, a babe in the woods, is like “sure!” and Craig Robinson is like oooooooooooh I’m gonna getcha now that I have this picture of you. Yeah, sure, sounds nice!

Jack asks JoeLo if he can talk to him outside and get some advice. He says he wants to ask someone on a date but has never been on one before. JoeLo is like WHAT? But you’re A PERFECT 10, and then Jack tells JoeLo that he is also a perfect 10 and JoeLo blushes and that’s wholesome masculinity!

JoeLo: “I am not on your level, okay?”

Jack: “Are you kidding me? with that smile? And how you have your mustache but it’s just the bottom half?”

Then Jack says JoeLo looks hot in his police uniform and JoeLo says that he actually helped design it! And Jack says that the dark brown pocket lapels are the perfect thing to accentuate his lower chest. Teach! Your! Men! And! Boys! To! Stay! Tender!

JoeLo says that if Jack takes a girl out and he’s having fun and paying attention and making sure she’s having fun he’ll be golden. Jack asks about kissing and JoeLo demonstrates what it’s going to look like when a girl wants to kiss and then Jack asks about dancing and they dance together in the street and I’M NOT SORRY TO LOVE IT!

Armed with his newfound knowledge, Jack goes home and asks Kathy to the Christmas dance. He’s going because he’s a chaperone so it’s NOT weird!

Kathy: “Jack, I—”

Jack: “Oh, of course. You’re already going with somebody else.”

Kathy clarifies that no, she is not already going with somebody else to the middle school dance, because that would be illegal. Jack says he’s been trying to lay low like she wanted, “but for once, I just want to stand tall.” Kathy’s defenses are routed. She says yes.

They travel to some kind of big city for a Pretty Woman shopping montage to get Jack an outfit for the dance. Jack has a snowball fight with some kids in the street—DUDE, THAT IS YOUR BODY. They get Jack a beautiful tailored suit and snowman cufflinks (HOW RICH IS KATHY?) and now it’s time for the dance. Kathy ties Jack’s bowtie. Jack confesses that he actually bought another thing online with her credit card—it’s a magic snowflake necklace. (That’s also your body btw! Like me giving my boyfriend a necklace shaped like a severed nipple!)

Jack: “I just figured it might be nice to commemorate our time together.” (Because he thinks he’s going to die soon I guess??)

Jack: “It’s a snowflake because I’m a snow… man.”

Hahahahahaha.

He puts the necklace on her and they have an intimate moment of almost-kissing. They get to the dance and Jack has secret handshakes with all the kids. Kathy is officially on a date with the most popular guy in school!!!!!!!

Jack asks one of his child friends whether he’s going to dance with his date, but the kid says he doesn’t know how to dance. Jack says, “I just had my very fashionable mustache friend teach me,” and tells the kid to follow his lead. Jack and Kathy dance, and the kid and his date dance. Jack is actively melting throughout.

Kathy: “You can hold me closer if you like.”

Jack: “I don’t want to melt. You’re giving off a lot of heat right now.”

Sorry, again, is she hoping to have intercourse with his COLD PENIS?

Then Jack does a big choreographed dance number with all the kids while Kathy wanders around looking at the ice sculptures. She notices an ice sculpture of a snowman and puts her bra on it, hoping it’ll come to life too (Kathy is poly). No, jk, she notices that the snowman is MELTING and she realizes that Jack is probably melting too from dancing too hard! And she’s not wrong—he is extremely wet!

Kathy takes Jack outside to roll around in the snow. Kathy’s cold, so Jack rubs her arms.

Jack: “Does that help?”

Kathy: “It would if you had a normal body temperature?”

So you acknowledge that his anatomy is cold?? His entire anatomy???

Then they almost kiss but at the last second Jack pulls away. They go back inside and she’s like wtf man, “was it something I said?” and he’s like no, “this has been the best night of my life, but the truth is, I don’t know how much more time that I have left,” and explains that he doesn’t want her to have to go through losing her soulmate again—the first time from cancer, the second time from being a melted snowman.

Jack doesn’t want to leave Kathy behind and hurt her like that, because he loves her. Kathy hugs him and says it’s okay. Her hug bone cancer is in remission!

Craig Robinson is still hunting for the perverted streaker. And it’s finally time! It’s the return of CHEKOV’S BANK MACHINE. Craig Robinson realizes that the ATM has a camera on it and the streaker’s weiner would have torpedoed right past it.

It’s time for the annual Christmas party at Kathy’s Kafe, and Jack is in the kitchen making egg nog for everyone. He begs Kathy to let him serve it himself so he can say hi, but she says he can’t because “it’s a steam bath out there!” Yes, and it’s famously cool in diner kitchens!

Craig Robinson steps out of the bathroom and interrupts the party.

Lauren Holly: “Was he wearing sunglasses in the bathroom?”

Kathy: “How long have you been in the bathroom?”

yet again i say unto you lol

Craig Robinson is like YOU GUYS! STOP MAKING FUN OF ME! I’m trying to protect YOU from CRIME! He guilt trips them hard. He says never gets a thank you, “always some giggles.” He’s sick of the remarks!

Craig Robinson: “Since I’ve been in sheriff we haven’t had a single murder in Hope Springs.”

Doo-Dad Queen: “We haven’t had a murder in Hope Springs for 100 years.”

Craig Robinson pulls out the naked ATM footage and all the horny women say LEMME SEE IT. Craig Robinson handcuffs Hot Frosty and takes him to jail, a moral absolutist caring naught for public opinion.

Hot Frosty (noble): “Me saying sory isn’t enough. I broke the law and I have to accept the consequences.”

Doo-Dad Lady: “He’s different from us, [Craig Robinson]!”

Diner Waitress: “What do you mean ‘different'?”

Doctor Katy Mixon with an INCREDIBLE Line Read: “He’s a snowman that magically came to life!!!”

She explains that Jack is the “muscular snowman from the sculpture festivsl” (it was a COMPETITION!!!) and Lauren Holly is like, “I thought he looked familiar!”

Kathy: “So you all just buy that he’s a snowman?”

Diner Waitress: “It’s Christmas.”

SO?????????

Doo-Dad Lady: “A man that sweet’s just gotta be magic.”

Across the street in prison, Jack pleads for his life with the sheriff and asks if they can at least open the window. He is actively dying. Craig Robinson discovers that Jack has no fingerprints and takes this to mean that he is a Soviet sleeper agent. Kathy comes over to rescue Jack and Craig Robinson says that bail is $2000 but actually he’s going home now so she can’t bail Jack out until the 26th.

Kathy is like DUDE CAN I AT LEAST GET HIM SOME ICE WATER and Craig Robinson explains that “Sleeper agents are trained to regulate their body functions.”

Kathy says BRB and runs back to the diner. Jack is like oh well guess I’ll die. Kathy pulls all the money out of the safe but it isn’t enough. Luckily, it’s a wonderful life, if you know what I mean!!!!!!! While Kathy and JoeLo beg fruitlessly for Jack’s life, the entire town shows up to support them! They pass the hat and come up with the rest of the bail money—almost. They’re still $10 short. Just then, the kid that Hot Frosty taught to dance earlier comes in with the final $10 for johnny law! And would you believe this? He’s Craig Robinson’s son!

Craig Robinson asks why the son would betray his father and help someone who did a crime and the kid says, “because he’s my friend!” The town says they love Hot Frosty as well because ever since he arrived he’s been working to make their lives better instead of worse (implication: ACAB). Craig Robinson is ashamed and says that everyone should take their money back—he’ll release Hot Frosty free of charge.

Unfortunately, it’s too late. Craig Robinson carries Jack’s deceased corpse out of the police station and throws him in the snow. A weeping Kathy tells the snowman’s cadaver that she is falling in love with him and she doesn’t care if it was brief, it was worth it. She bestows true love’s kiss upon the cold ghoul and then takes her scarf back since he doesn’t need it anymore, being dead.

The whole town is crying, but then they quickly lose interest and leave INCLUDING KATHY. Someone’s like, “Let’s go, honey, let Sheriff Hunter take care of this,” and to be clear, by “this” you mean the DEAD BODY IN THE SNOW????? How does he even do that paperwork? I guess that’s his punishment.

I’ve heard a few complaints in the Discourse that Hot Frosty qualifies as copaganda, since it portrays the sheriff as a lovable buffoon, but I’d like to offer this counter-argument: This man MURDERS HOT FROSTY IN CUSTODY. He roasts him to death in his jail cell out of pure spite, despite the whole town pleading for leniency due to Hot Frosty’s unique medical condition (snowman). That’s worse than Training Day! Is it copaganda, or is it holding a mirror up to society???

Anyway, just when Kathy’s given up hope that her dead wet boyfriend will come back to life and pleasure her with his Outshine Bar, who should pop up? It’s Hot Frosty! He got re-alived by true love’s kiss. He and Kathy hug. She says she thought he was dead and he says he’s not dead, but he does feel “kind of funny.” OMG, it’s called being cold! He can feel the snow on his skin! Everyone in town is excited that Jack is finally cold because they know it means that he’s a real boy now. Did he also grow fingerprints? It would be sooo funny if the end of the movie was that Jack Snowman actually was a Russian sleeper agent.

THEY KISS FINALLY.

Everybody loves it, even Craig Robinson.

Now Kathy can take Jack’s virginity at a normal temperature!

Cut to Christmas morning: Jack gives Kathy a book on home repair, but like—isn’t that the thing YOU offer????? (MEN—that’s how they get you!) Kathy stops in the middle of presents to go fix the furnace by herself. Now she can finally throw away the post-it! What a good present!

Then Kathy gives Jack tickets to Hawaii—almost as good as a furnace repair book—so they put their bags in the car and drive there across the bottom of the ocean presumably since HE DOESN’T HAVE ID AND DEFINITELY CANNOT BOARD A PLANE.

Happy holidays!

1. WHO HOLDS A DONUT LIKE THIS

2. Controversial take: A Christmas Prince: The Royal Baby is the finest in the Christmas Prince trilogy!!! Royal Wedding can eat shit!