FLOP CULTURE

JACK FROST

Somewhere between Batman and Birdman, Michael Keaton played a family-friendly snowman. The misjudged result seemed expressly designed to freeze everyone’s cockles…

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Why it was a good idea (on paper)

‘What I wanted to do was be in a really nice holiday movie,’ Michael Keaton said of Jack Frost. He aced a not-as-nice one with Batman Returns, so why not change the cape for buttons and twigs?

What went wrong?

Jack Frost’s problems set in before Keaton rode the sledge. Sam Raimi was set to direct, with George Clooney leading. When Clooney battled Mr. Freeze in Batman & Robin instead, Raimi also left. The new director was TV’s Troy Miller, a man less well-versed in mixing clashing tones than Raimi. The peculiar premise demanded careful judgement: blues muso and ‘flaky’ dad Jack Frost dies in an accident, leaving his young son, Charlie (Joseph Cross), bereft. Merry Christmas! But a magic harmonica revives Jack as a freakylooking snowman. The idea was that you could see Keaton in the snowman’s face, but Jim Henson’s Creature Shop delivered an uncanny and expressionless Keaton/Clooney hybrid. More oddly still, the snowman’s head slides off at key moments, like The Thing for kids. The weird result as it wobbled between slapstick and schmaltz was unsettling enough without Keaton’s faux-Black patter and queasy quips about his balls. The filmmakers aimed for cute and shot wide, leaving Keaton to phone it in. ‘They didn’t know what they wanted in the role,’ he said, ‘So I pretty much played myself.’ Damned by critics as ‘treacly and fake’ and ‘seriously fucked-up’, Jack Frost resolutely failed to crack the box office.

Redeeming feature

US hardcore heavyweight Henry Rollins enjoys himself as an OTT ice hockey coach (‘Wipe the ice with their filthy butts!’), but this is not a film that accommodates redemption.

What happened next?

Keaton hoped for a film that kids revisited every year. Whether that ever happens or not, his career melted for a while afterwards.

Should it be remade?

Pocket that harmonica. Unless Raimi wants a roll, this seasonal aberration is certainly best left on ice.