The bizarre Christmas movie Roger Ebert called “unwatchable”
When we talk about movies, it’s rare that we discuss anyone other than directors and movie stars, with icons like Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, Leonardo DiCaprio and Margot Robbie having helped mould modern cinema and culture. But what about the people who publicise such movies, the likes of movie critics Mark Kermode, Pauline Kael and Roger Ebert, who can make or break a movie’s success?
While Kael thrived in academic circles during the 1960s and beyond, and Kermode continues to thrill audiences with his rants to this very day, it was Ebert who was perhaps the most influential of the bunch, being something of a movie icon in his own right. Known for his essential Siskel & Ebert & the Movies show he hosted with Gene Siskel, Ebert was known for his sharp wit and direct criticism.
Often giving glowing reviews to the likes of such classic filmmakers as Robert Altman, Francis Ford Coppola and Jane Campion, Ebert also wasn’t too afraid of holding back, regularly venting his frustrations regarding particular movies. Crafting a list of his most hated movies before his death in 2013, Ebert included such notorious stinkers as Bob Spiers’ Spice World, Pitof’s Catwoman and Tom Green’s Freddy Got Fingered.
However, one movie that wasn’t on the list yet remained one of his most hated movies of all time was the curious Christmas movie Jack Frost from 1998.
“Jack Frost is the kind of movie that makes you want to take the temperature, if not feel for the pulse, of the filmmakers,” Ebert wrote right off the bat, “What possessed anyone to think this was a plausible idea for a movie? It’s a bad film, yes, but that’s not the real problem. Jack Frost could have been co-directed by Orson Welles and Steven Spielberg and still be unwatchable, because of that damned snowman”.
Ebert is, indeed, on to something, with Jack Frost being pure nightmare fuel for anyone who suffers from chionoandrophobia (a phobia of snow and wintery weather), telling the story of a father who is killed in a car accident, only to return to his son a year later in the form of a snowman. You may be thinking that it all sounds like a charming tale, but it’s only when you see the snowman itself that you realise just how terrifying the whole concept is.
“The snowman gave me the creeps,” Ebert added, “Never have I disliked a movie character more. They say state-of-the-art special effects can create the illusion of anything on the screen, and now we have proof: It’s possible for the Jim Henson folks and Industrial Light and Magic to put their heads together and come up with the most repulsive single creature in the history of special effects, and I am not forgetting the Chucky doll or the desert intestine from Star Wars. To see the snowman is to dislike the snowman”.
Take a look at Jack Frost and the snowman in question in the clip below.
