Jack Frost Reviews

The cloying odor of therapy hangs over this preachy holiday fable about a boy whose neglectful dad dies and comes back as a snowman. Jack Frost (Michael Keaton) is a struggling blues musician whose wife (Kelly Preston) and 11-year-old son Charlie (Joseph Cross) wish he'd spend less time on the road. Just before Christmas, it looks as though Jack's band might finally get its big break when they're spotted by an A&R man from a major label. Jack misses Charlie's hockey game for a recording session and agrees reluctantly to play an influential record-company executive's Christmas party, sending Charlie into a major snit: He even returns the harmonica his dad gave him. Halfway to the gig, Jack decides to blow off the party and go back to his family, but is killed in a car crash. The following year, he's reincarnated as a living snowman and sets about putting things right with his son. This exercise in warped wish-fulfillment appears to have been penned by screenwriters firmly in touch with their inner brats, who are still nursing major grudges against the parents who failed to recognize their children's rightful and permanent position: smack dab in the center of the family universe. Come on -- Jack is a bad dad because he has to work? And oh, those good-for-you lessons! Bullies are just acting out because they have issues. Girls can play hockey as well as boys. Everybody deserves a second chance. Departed loved ones aren't gone as long as we hold them in our hearts. Snow dad is better than no dad (courtesy of that bully who's acting out). A few minutes of charming silliness, involving snow dad skating, snowboarding and picking himself out of snowdrifts, don't begin to compensate.