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Any film lover knows that some of Roger Ebert’s reviews are of films he absolutely hated, but especially those he considered to be a personal offense. The late, great film critic loved the artform and potential of film so much that any film he considered to be below his standards was an insult not just to him, but to cinema as a whole. Such is the case for the family film Jack Frost, which also starred Michael Keaton.
Released 27 years ago, Jack Frost is the story of the titular Jack Frost (Keaton), an up-and-coming singer and a lousy father. A year after his untimely death, Jack is reincarnated as a snowman, and he uses this second chance at life to reconnect with his son, Charlie. As harmless as the film is, Ebert tore Jack Frost in half in his review because he really hated the snowman.
Roger Ebert Couldn’t Get Over Jack Frost’s Design & Visual Effects
Jack Frost Accidentally Foreshadowed Today’s Excessive Fealty to Realism in Film
To be clear, Ebert had many other legitimate reasons for disliking Jack Frost. However, he dedicated the bulk of his scathing one-star review to complaining about the snowman’s design and how much he couldn’t stand looking at it. As Ebert put it: «To see the snowman is to dislike the snowman.»
Ebert also admitted that the snowman creeped him out. Moreover, he bluntly states that he has never hated a fictional character more than the snowman that Keaton voices. In his own words: «Never have I disliked a movie character more.» It should also be noted that Keaton appears in person for the film’s first 20 or so minutes, and he spends the rest of the runtime voicing the snowman.
For what it’s worth, Ebert acknowledged that the Jim Henson Creature Shop’s puppeteers and Industrial Lights & Magic’s digital artists fulfilled their jobs to the best of their artistic capabilities. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t reconcile how lifelike Jack Frost’s filmmakers wanted the snowman to be with the story’s cutesy intent.
Roger Ebert: It doesn’t look like a snowman, anyway. It looks like a cheap snowman suit. When it moves, it doesn’t exactly glide–it walks, but without feet, like it’s creeping on its torso.
It has anorexic tree limbs for arms, which spin through 360 degrees when it’s throwing snowballs. It has a big, wide mouth that moves as if masticating Gummi Bears. And it’s this kid’s dad.
To be fair to the filmmakers and to clear up Ebert’s criticisms, Jack the Snowman is not a poorly-made work of digital art. Besides a few instances where the use of a green screen (i.e. the big snowboard and snow sled chase) and where the practical snowman suit is clearly replaced by a digital model, Jack is a decent CGI character for a film made in the ’90s. Jack’s problem as a snowman is that he looks more uncanny than cute or cuddly, as the filmmakers intended.
It’s currently difficult to tell what exactly Jack Frost’s creators had in mind, but it seems as if the sentient snowman’s design was influenced by the desire to make him more «realistic» rather than appealing. Jack may arguably be what a talking snowman would realistically and scientifically look like, but he’s the farthest thing from likable. He’s too uncanny to be believable yet too humanoid to be truly out of this world. Weirdly enough, and with the benefit of hindsight, Jack Frost’s eerily humanoid snowman unknowingly foreshadowed one of the most tiresome trends in today’s filmmaking.
A blurry but undeniable link can be drawn between Jack Frost and the realistic but dull and uncanny design philosophies of Battleship, Cowboys vs. Aliens, and even the new Dune films or the Marvel Cinematic Universe. At best, such designs are boring. But at worst, they can unnerve even the most hardened and experienced connoisseurs of cinema like Ebert. That being said, the real reason why Ebert hated Jack the Snowman had more to do with the way he was written than how odd he looked.
Roger Ebert Hated How Little Imagination & Thought Was Put Into Jack Frost
Jack Frost Didn’t Do Anything Interesting or Noteworthy With Its Gimmick
Ebert’s real umbrage with Jack the Snowman is that he embodied Jack Frost’s abject refusal to do anything with his potential and creativity. Despite having a focal character as outlandish as a sentient snowman voiced by the star of the groundbreaking Batman (1989), Jack Frost is as by-the-numbers as a family movie about a neglectful father’s redemption can get. It doesn’t help that such films were commonplace and oversaturated in the ’90s.
Anyone who’s seen the likes of Click, Nine Lives, The Shaggy Dog’s remake, and even Mary Poppins knows exactly what kind of father Jack is and how he’ll use his second chance. In more ways than one, Jack Frost is Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Jingle All the Way without a hint of self-awareness or irony. The only difference is that Jack Frost’s titular lacking father becomes a snowman and that he is (for some inexplicable reason) modeled after Bruce Springsteen, but only if The Boss and The E Street Band exclusively sang holiday music.
Roger Ebert: [Jack Frost, the snowman] is a reflection of the lame-brained screenplay that despite having a sentient snowman, [Jack Frost, the movie] casts about for plot fillers, including a school bully, a chase scene, snowball fights, a hockey team, an old family friend to talk to Mom.
… you know, stuff to keep up the interest between those boring scenes when the snowman is TALKING.
Ebert really hated how little Jack Frost did with its sentient snowman or the very idea of Charlie being reunited with his dead dad. Ideally, the film would explore its version of the afterlife, then indulge in the potential shenanigans and absurdities that being reincarnated as a snowman could lead to. Instead, Jack Frost wastes its time with corny bonding moments between Charlie and Jack. Such scenes include Jack and Charlie snow sledding, Jack teaching Charlie his special hockey technique, and Jack watching Charlie at his hockey game.
These aren’t bad in and of themselves, but they’re beyond predictable and cloying by the standards of family films. They also wouldn’t differ all that much if Jack’s resurrected form was not a snowman. If there’s one thing Ebert got wrong in his review, it’s blaming Charlie for all of these. In his review, Ebert described Charlie as a «… self-centered little movie child» who «… is more concerned with how Jack Frost can help him.» But in the film, Jack is the one who forces his way back into Charlie’s life.
As a snowman, Jack overcompensates for not being more involved in his son’s life by dragging him into the kinds of stereotypical activities that fathers and sons would have. He even has the gall to lecture Charlie about growing up and taking responsibility, despite him prioritizing his selfish interests over his family when he was still alive. Charlie only comes across as needy because he is, understandably, a grieving child who desperately wants to spend more time with his dead father. For all the vitriol he threw at the snowman, Ebert didn’t save enough for Jack.
Jack Frost Is One of the Most Ridiculous Versions of One of Hollywood’s Most Overused Plots
Roger Ebert’s Quotable Review Is the Best Thing Jack Frost Has to Offer
Besides Ebert’s hilariously abysmal review, nothing encapsulates Jack Frost’s pathetic quality better than its complete lack of a presence in the popular zeitgeist. More often than not, people and even online search engines think that the name «Jack Frost» refers to the no-budget horror films about killer snowmen that were made in Jack Frost’s wake. Many would (rightfully) argue that the likes of the slasher film Jack Frost (1997) and its unintentionally comical murder in a bathtub are more entertaining than Keaton’s frosty tale of reincarnation.
Jack Frost may not be the atrocious insult to intelligence that Ebert exaggerated it to be, but it really is one of the best embodiments of how bad and empty family movies were in the ’90s. For a good stretch of time, all filmmakers could think to do with family entertainment was to tell patronizing and self-aggrandizing stories about parents proving themselves to their kids.
Teaching children to appreciate their parents isn’t a bad lesson, but it can and should be taught by a character who’s more lovable and selfless than a creepy snowman who spends half his film cracking lame jokes about how he’s a snowman.
Jack Frost: You the man!
Charlie Frost: No, you the man!
Jack Frost: Nope, I’m the snowman!
Jack Frost is now available to watch and own physically and digitally.
