SNOWMANCE
After a pre-Christmas breakup, a hopeless romantic finds love in the unlikely form of a snowman brought to life.
So there's this weird little girl named Sarah (Ashley Newbrough as an adult) living in St. Paul, Minnesota, the daughter of a reclusive furniture maker, who likes to make out with snowmen. I'm not judging, but I gotta figure a little girl's got better things to do with her time than fantasize about erotic encounters with the things she finds in her front yard. Some neighborhood boys notice this kid getting ready to shove her tongue down some innocent snowman's icy throat, and they tease her quite a bit before destroying the snowman, putting the poor inanimate object out of its misery.
But Sarah's best friend, a little wiener named Nick (Adam Hurtig as an adult) who wishes so badly that he were that lucky snowman, tries to get her mind off those damned bullies by asking her to describe her ideal boyfriend. She thinks he should be tall, ruggedly handsome, charming, funny, smart, brave, etc. Pretty much the textbook definition for "perfect boyfriend" in the mind of an idealistic tween. So Nick rebuilds the snowman, telling Sarah to project those ideal qualities upon his blank canvas. She names him "Cole" and thus begins a tradition that lasts 18 years.
Each year, on December 12th, Nick and Sarah meet up in front of her house and rebuild Cole the snowman, and each year his fashion may change a little based on Sarah's current tastes, but the spirit of the snowman, her ideal boyfriend, remains the same. The pair are always single around Christmas, because Sarah can never find a real man who can live up to the "Cole" she has in her head, and because Nick's madly in love with Sarah and everybody except for Sarah can see that plain as day. But Nick's a coward who doesn't want to ruin their friendship by making things weird if she were to reject his amorous advances, so he keeps his mouth shut and plays the role of the dutiful best friend while living a secret life of quiet desperation.
In the present day, Sarah and Nick meet to build this year's Cole in the yard, but Sarah has a new accessory to give her dream date: a red silk scarf that once belonged to her late mother. Sarah's father gave the scarf to his daughter earlier that night as an early Christmas gift and told her the perfectly lovely story behind the treasured item:
As a younger man, he found himself alone in Paris on Christmas Eve, stranded in a foreign land and surrounded by apathetic faces. Suddenly he spotted this bloom of brilliant red in a sea of grey and black, and he was drawn to that splash of color like a moth to a flame. And before he knew it, there she was: a beautiful young American woman on her own in the City of Lights, searching for romance and finding her soulmate in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower. The pair quickly became inseparable, moving back to St. Paul, getting married and starting a family. Not too much later, baby Sarah entered the picture, the family furniture business was booming, and all was right in the world.
What a sweet story.
So Sarah puts her mother's red scarf around the snowman's fat neck, and that night it comes to life, becoming a ruggedly handsome young man named Cole (Jesse Hutch) who exhibits all of the qualities of Sarah's ideal boyfriend. Naturally, he sweeps her off her feet the next morning, returning her mother's scarf, claiming he found it in the street (because he's a secret snowman), and charming the curlers right out of Sarah's hair as he invites her to a romantic lunch getaway ten seconds after introducing himself. She says yes, of course, because why wouldn't she? Sarah just got dumped for the seventeenth time, after all, and she's on the rebound.
Nick doesn't like this Cole fella, thinking he's too good to be true. Nobody's that funny, charming, dashing and kind. Plus Cole has this bizarre habit of calling Nick "little guy", and that just burns his toast. He doesn't say it to be cruel, at least not as far as I can tell. Cole just genuinely seems to think that calling Nick "little guy" is a term of endearment. He's a little funny like that, with a few other mild quirks for good measure, like never wearing a coat and getting uncomfortably warm indoors because he claims his blood runs cold, freaking out when he sees people eating carrots, and having warm, one-sided conversations with every snowman he meets.
Because he's a snowman, too. That's funny, right? He acts a little wacky because he's still trying to figure out how to pass for human. And apparently he's the same snowman that Sarah and Nick have built and rebuilt every year since they were kids, because he seems to remember all of those Decembers in Sarah's front yard like they were yesterday. I don't know how this Christmas magic works, and frankly, I find it all a bit confusing.
I guess Sarah works for a magazine called Twin Cities Life, and she's been trying to convince her boss to create a position on the staff for a travel writer that she can fill, because she's always wanted to travel the world on somebody else's dime. But why would a magazine focused on night life and human interest stories in the twin cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis ever need a travel writer on their staff? Traveling to exotic locales is the furthest thing from the mission statement of Twin Cities Life, which exists primarily to make the Twin Cities look good to tourists, and Sarah's boss keeps telling her as much, but this girl's like a dog with a bone. An annoying, broken record of a dog.
But Sarah is assigned the feature story of the magazine's holiday issue, which is still a pretty big deal. And she wants Sarah's cartoonist best friend Nick to illustrate the story, which means Nick's not gonna be standing on line in the soup kitchen this Christmas Eve. Although December 13th seems a little late for a magazine to just now be planning the feature story for their big holiday issue. Magazines tend to be planned months in advance, and the holiday issue of any worthwhile periodical would have hit newsstands by the end of November. But I guess Twin Cities Life is actually an online-only magazine, so they can really afford to push those deadlines.
I'm going to be real here and say right now that this movie isn't very good. Snowmance is just a lifeless, inconsequential placeholder of a movie. I could keep typing paragraph after paragraph, just listlessly explaining every excruciating detail of the film's plot, but I don't want to put myself through that, and I don't want to put you through that, so let me try and rush through the rest of the plot as quickly as possible.
Sarah decides to write the magazine's feature article about her whirlwind romance with Cole, and Nick is assigned to tag along and illustrate their glamorous adventures for the story, which he's perfectly fine with, being such a wiener. But Nick eventually finds his breaking point when he builds what he calls a "snow shark" in the park, but it really looks like a "snow manatee", and Cole shows him up by building a beautiful snow angel, and they get into a snowball fight. Scandalous! Of course, Cole wasn't intending to embarrass Nick with his impeccable snow angel-building skills, because Cole's just a decent guy who didn't even know he was capable of sculpting such a beautiful object out of snow, having only been human for a few days.
But Nick's a petty, jealous little asshole and couldn't help but start some shit by trashing a snowman in the park that Cole was chatting with after taking offense at Cole's amazing snow sculpting skills, instigating the snowball fight in the first place. That snowman could have been Cole's best friend, or perhaps even a family member, and Nick just smashed him to bits like those bullies at the beginning of the movie, ignoring Cole's sincere pleading for Nick to spare the snowman's life. And remember, the audience is supposed to be rooting for Nick, who is without a doubt the worst character in this movie.
Sarah decides she loves Cole and wants to go spend Christmas in Paris with her ice-cold loverboy, but Nick grows a pair and confront Sarah in her foyer, sweatily rambling at her face and refusing to make direct eye contact, begging her not to go because he's in love with her and yadda, yadda, yadda, she decides she's still going to Paris. Nick seethes back in his apartment that looks like the inside of a bank vault (seriously, his front door is a fucking vault door, it's obscene) because he feels that he's put in the appropriate amount of time in this relationship with Sarah and is somehow entitled to her love. Like she just needs to snap to attention and realize the man of her dreams has been standing in front of her all these years in the form of this snotty, manipulative, co-dependent little nitwit named Nick.
Look, little guy, if Sarah wants to go bang a hunky snowman in Paris for Christmas, it's really none of your business. Anyway, I'm sure your Fleshlight misses you terribly.
This is the noble romantic lead who couldn't help but make some really shitty comments within earshot of Sarah's father when he overheard her and Cole having an argument a little earlier, and the old man stared daggers at the little dickhead, who wilted under his iron gaze as he had to remind the thoughtless Nick to stop being such an asshole since his daughter was clearly upset by the situation.
He's a real catch.
Put simply, Nick doesn't deserve Sarah's love. Cole's clearly a better fit for her (for obvious reasons), and he's a genuinely selfless guy, which Nick certainly can't claim as one of his own virtues. But the movie wants Sarah (and the audience) to reject Cole because he's too perfect for Sarah, which doesn't work, because Nick's just an all-around awful person who never manages to realistically prove himself to be worthy of winning Sarah's heart.
At the end of the movie, Sarah's in a car with Cole en route to the airport for her dream getaway to Paris when she opens Nick's Christmas present; his iPad. No, I'm sorry, it's the latest issue of Twin Cities Life, featuring Sarah's cover story. I'm not sure why he couldn't just send Sarah a link to the issue so that she could read it on her phone instead of relinquishing his iPad, but Nick's really not too bright. At the last minute, Nick switched out all the illustrations of Sarah and Cole in the story, replacing them with doodles of Sarah and Nick, which the editor-in-chief apparently approved, and that makes absolutely no sense, since the illustrations no longer match the accompanying article, meaning the main feature of the magazine's biggest issue of the year is completely ruined. But it's okay, because Nick's in love.
As Sarah scrolls through the images on Nick's iPad, she snaps to attention and realizes the man of her dreams has been standing in front of her all these years in the form of this snotty, manipulative, co-dependent little nitwit named Nick. So she tells Cole that she can't go to Paris with him because she'd rather stay with her dream date Nick, and Cole tells Sarah that all he wants is for her to be happy. Then he fucks off back to Sarah's front yard in his original snowman form, waiting for the first unseasonably warm day when he will melt away, never to return again.
Sarah finally finds the love of her life in this mealy-mouthed loser Nick, and the owner of Twin Cities Life even agrees to promote Sarah to the newly-created position of Travel Editor, allowing her to fulfill her fondest wish. But she bizarrely declines the offer, because she's found all the adventure she can handle right at home with Nick. So she turns down her dream job because she suddenly no longer wants to see the world, all thanks to falling in love with her best friend. How does that make any sense?
If anything, it sounds like Sarah's denying following her own dreams because she doesn't want to upset her new boyfriend, which is a terrible decision. In twenty years, when Sarah's trapped in a loveless marriage with three kids, still living in her dilapidated family home that she can't afford to fix up and sell because she's become a stay-at-home mother and Nick's barely making ends meet as a mediocre freelance illustrator, she's going to look back on her decision to never leave St. Paul as the biggest mistake of her entire life. And Cole won't be there to sweep her off her feet once again, because he fucking melted.
This movie sucks. The story's half-baked and lazily plotted, none of the actors (except for Jesse Hutch) are particularly interesting in their roles, and the whole production just looks cheap. I will give the move credit for actually shooting in Winnipeg in the middle of winter, because the exterior locations look authentically cold for a change. The actors are thankful for their heavy coats for once. Except for poor Jesse Hutch, who had to walk around in freezing temperatures wearing nothing but some flimsy-looking long-sleeved shirts. He must have been miserable during the outdoor location shoots.
Regardless of the accuracy of its winter setting, Snowmance is still a terrible movie. The only moment in which I found myself at all invested in the story was the scene when Sarah's father presented her with her mother's beloved scarf and explained its significance. The story felt sincere and profound, and I found myself wanting to see that movie instead of the sewage of a holiday romance I was stuck with.
Christmas Magic - It's funny, but just a day after I mention that this particular trope may not pop up again, here I am. There's no explanation as to how or why Cole sprang into existence, so I guess this fits the bill. But it doesn't feel like magic. No, nothing in this movie feels like magic. I don't even understand what Cole even is, exactly. He is the snowman Sarah and Nick constructed, but he's also every snowman they've constructed. And he remembers all of his incarnations. So he's like the shittiest Time Lord, but he finally regenerated into a real boy, only to be rejected by the woman for whom he was literally made.
And since Sarah's found her true love with Nick, she's never going to build another Cole again, so does this mean he's dead? Did he have a soul? Did he suffer when he died? Did he go to Heaven, or did he just trickle down into the storm drain? Cole was the only character in the movie I liked at all, and he just disappears in the end, and it's supposed to be a happy ending, but it feels really fucked up. This is what I get for watching another movie on ION, a network of the damned if ever there was one.
Whatever. I'm done.
VERDICT: I'M DONE
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| This shot is straight out of a horror movie. |
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