THE AISLE SEAT - "JACK FROST"
by Mike McGranaghan
Watching Jack Frost is like watching two separate movies. The first is an excruciatingly dull family drama about an innocent young boy whose father neglects him emotionally. The second is a modestly amusing special effects extravaganza about a guy who gets reincarnated as a snowman. The thing that draws the two films together is that the boy's father is killed in a car accident and comes back to life a year later as the snowman his son has built in the front yard. Does this idea sound creepy to anyone else? (Honestly, the creepiness factor never occurred to me until I actually started watching the film.) Yes, Jack Frost is that most precious of ideas: a feel-good movie about death.
Michael Keaton plays the title character, a struggling singer in an eponymous rock band (the most imaginative thing about Jack Frost is that it actually casts Keaton as a singer; he sings even worse than I do). So intent is Frost on making it in the music business that he often abandons his wife Gabby (Kelly Preston) and son Charlie (Joseph Cross) in order to chase another gig. After reneging on one promise too many, Frost ditches a sure-thing audition for a record company bigwig to return home on Christmas Eve. We are led to believe that he dies in a car accident on his way there, although the staging of the accident is so haphazard that he could have been attacked by an errant reindeer for all we know.
One year later, Charlie pulls out the "magic" harmonica his father gave him. "Whenever you need me," Frost told the boy, " just play this and I'll be there." Lo and behold, when Charlie blows a note, the spirit of his dead father inhabits the snowman out front. Now the walking, talking, melting snowman wants to give his son the attention he never did before. I suppose the filmmakers could have told a nice story about father/son reconciliation, but instead, the big advantage for Charlie seems to be that he can now outfox the local bully in a snowball fight (there are two such fights in the movie, both staged with the elaborate seriousness of a Saving Private Ryan battle scene).
The first thing that struck me about Jack Frost was how dark it was, not just in tone, but in its physical look as well. The cinematography is, quite frankly, ugly. It doesn't help that the film feels oddly restrained. This story - which wants to have a Spielbergian magical quality - should have possessed a lot more energy, and a visual flair to match. Director Troy Miller has no business even making a movie like this. The filmmaker (whose biggest previous credit was the Wonderful World of Disney movie "Beverly Hills Family Robinson," which - believe it or not - I've actually seen) usually can't be bothered to invest the scenes with any interest. A fantastical story needs a director who will put a sense of awe into it; Miller has devoted more energy to the special effects than to the emotions or the plot. Only a madcap toboggan chase has any juice to it. Go figure - another young director more interested in action than plot or characterization.
The talented cast is mostly wasted, especially Keaton. For better or worse, the actor has a penchant for choosing edgy, offbeat projects, so it's especially disheartening to see him in a dopey, one-note piece of fluff like this (interestingly, the role was once earmarked for George Clooney, who wisely dropped out). Also poorly used is Mark Addy, the British actor who was so hilarious as the self-consciously overweight Dave in The Full Monty. Here, he just plays second banana as Keaton's best pal. He has nothing funny to do, no character to play. I'm afraid Addy is just cashing a big Hollywood paycheck. The best performance comes from the legendarily angry thrash-rocker Henry Rollins as a sadistic hockey coach who is accosted by the snowman. I was stunned when I saw Rollins' name in the credits; I was even more stunned to see him turn a worthless part into a tiny bit of comic gold.
Although Jack Frost is in no way a good movie, I did enjoy the second half a lot more than the first. However, I was only tolerating it for the sublimely ridiculous piece of junk that it is (and please do not mistake this for a recommendation by any means). Where else can you see an obviously-fake animatronic snowman giving hockey lessons, pining over his human wife, and melting slowly as his son looks on weepily? And, I will admit that the picture does occasionally flash a glimmer of wit, however low-brow it may be (when the snowman gets nailed in the chest with two snowballs, it looks like he's grown breasts - and who among us hasn't done that to a snowman in our youth?).
The film concludes with a howler of an ending that calls to mind the scene in Ghost where Patrick Swayze makes himself "visible" to Demi Moore. Instead of achieving that movie's emotional climax, this one walks right up to the edge of the cliff and jumps off. There's an interesting idea here for a high-concept comedy, but it gets lost amid the blatant attempts at warm-and-fuzzy pathos. Jack Frost wants to tell you that people never die as long as you keep them in your heart; instead, the message seems to be that parents don't really die, they just melt.
(
out of four)
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