JACK FROST (Warner Bros.) Starring: Michael Keaton, Kelly Preston, Joseph Cross, Mark Addy. Screenplay: Mark Steven Johnson and Steve Bloom & Jonathan Roberts and Jeff Cesario. Producers: Mark Canton and Irving Azoff. Director: Troy Miller. MPAA Rating: PG (profanity, mild vulgar innuendo) Running Time: 95 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
On a snowy Christmas Eve, Jack Frost (Michael Keaton) reaches a life-changing decision. A small-time blues musician, Jack consistently puts attention to his wife Gabby (Kelly Preston) and 11-year-old son Charlie (Joseph Cross) on the back burner when a gig or recording session calls. It looks like this year will be no different, with Jack dropping plans for a family holiday when a record company exec schedules a Christmas day audition, but before he reaches the audition Jack realizes what he's missing and turns around to head home. That's when an icy road and broken windshield wipers intervene, and Jack is killed in a car accident.
At the half-hour mark of the family fantasy JACK FROST, the titular character has not yet been reborn as a walking, talking snowman a year after his death thanks to a magic harmonica tune. He has, however, already been reborn in the only way that matters dramatically. Jack doesn't die as a vaguely selfish flake who needs to learn What Really Matters; he dies repentant, on his way back home to make things right. What follows the appearance of Jack-as-snowman is not an experience which allows Jack to head to eternity with his priorities straight, but a collection of special effects-enhanced buddy-bonding moments. It's cute, yet utterly weightless.
There are worse things, I suppose, than a harmless bit of family shmaltz for the holiday season. Keaton is engaging enough as the hustling, slightly immature human Jack, goofing with Charlie in a way that suggests he's more interested in being a playmate than being a father. There's at least one very lively chase sequence which will charm the young ones, as well as a welcome paucity of inappropriately sniggering content. And it's true that the snowman (courtesy Jim Henson's Creature Shop) is a nifty creation, just the right combination of classic look and human expressiveness. There are enough giggles and guffaws in JACK FROST to make it fun for youngsters without either embarrassing parents or boring them entirely to sleep.
What makes it hard to swallow is that it's utterly inconsequential while pretending to be both hipper and more emotional than it really is. Self-aware dialogue has the newly-snowy Jack pondering the cosmic purpose for his state, wondering "Is it the name? 'Cause if it is, that's not even very clever." Another scene has Jack shaking his head ironically when Charlie flips past the animated "Frosty the Snowman" on television. Yet despite attempts to show that the film is a bit above its cutesy premise, it's rarely anything more than a syrupy trifle, sentimental without being resonant (from a story by Mark Steven Johnson, who made the sentimental, resonance-free SIMON BIRCH).
One could argue that JACK FROST isn't really about Jack at all, but about Charlie (a generally understated performance by Joseph Cross), in need of closure after the loss of a father he barely knew. Even that take on the story doesn't give it any added pull, not when the script keeps adding simplistic touches like a bully who abruptly drops his bullying and helps Charlie because he too understands what it's like to be without a dad. Eventually it's hard to identify any significant story at all as JACK FROST becomes more derivative and rushed towards its climax, complete with a final vision of the human Jack so reminiscent of GHOST I expected "Unchained Melody" to burst out on the soundtrack. JACK FROST isn't so much a story as it is a diverting bit of special effects silliness leading up to a sob cue. It taught me something important about What Really Matters in a film script: a character arc for the protagonist that's not complete before the first plot point.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 frost bites: 5.
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