The Poignancy of Thoughtless Cinema: My Thoughts on Holiday Touchdown: A Chiefs Love Story and Hot Frosty
We underestimate the need for media we don't have to think deeply about.
I spent this Thanksgiving in an unconventional way, after a long work day I went over to a friends house, we ordered pizza and watched Beavis and Butthead Do America. I had joked about how this was a bizarre way to celebrate the season, but my friend brought up an interesting point about Beavis and Butthead. He talked about how he found a sense of poignancy with the show because of its mundanity. Beavis and Butthead don’t have responsibilities, they don’t have worries or struggles. They just walk around, hang out and talk about music videos. I started to think about how many times I myself put on iCarly while I was in college when I got super stressed or overwhelmed. I also will watch a lot of Impractical Jokers when I need to shut my brain down. I started to think about this more - thoughtless entertainment is needed in our media landscape. Not every movie can be Citizen Kane because then Citizen Kane would cease to be special. To quote Syndrome in The Incredibles, “if everyone is super, that means no one is”.
Our goal at Workshopping Humanity is to examine the cultural and emotional reasons why we gravitate towards cinema. Usually, we like to highlight pieces of important art and how they shaped our culture. I find a lot of comfort in watching films that are well crafted that wrestle with deep psychological themes. I’ve seen Jane Schoenbrun’s film I Saw the TV Glow three times this year and was thoroughly moved by it each time. However, I don’t need every movie to be as subversive as that one is, sometimes I need a cozy movie that can take me to a simpler time.
The best cozy and simplistic films can also be breathtaking works of art. Films like Paddington 2 and My Neighbor Totoro are among my all time favorite movies that reach beyond convention but are still movies that give audiences exactly what they expect from their respected genre. Then there’s a movie like Holiday Touchdown: A Chiefs Love Story. Brett, what on Earth are you talking about? You might be asking right now. A Chiefs Love Story is a Hallmark film taking place in Kansas City about the love that blossoms between a Kansas City Chiefs super fan and the director of fan engagement for the Chiefs. It’s about as sublime as you think it would be.
I hate to claim that any movie is good or bad, because what constitutes are a good or bad film, but in the traditional sense of the word, A Chiefs Love Story is not a good movie. It has a familiar screenplay, clunky dialogue, stilted performances and workman like filmmaking. Every single shot set up is shot reverse shot through the whole thing. The rule of 180? Obliterated. The editing? Choppy, all over the place. The blocking? People just kinda stand around with no direction, you can tell most of the actors are reading off cue cards. It’s all the stuff you would expect from a made for TV movie that capitalizes off The Chiefs popularity. I watched the film simply to give some love to Missouri Film Distribution, which needs new life breathed into it. We need more film jobs around the Missouri area desperately. However, I didn’t hate watching this movie. I probably found more enjoyment sitting through it than Moana 2. Why? Because it gave me an excuse to not think about anything for two hours and isn’t that a precious gift in itself?
The film circulates around a macguffin, a magical Chiefs hat that is supposed to make the team win every game if it’s worn. This hat is treated so seriously by the main character that it becomes laughable. This movie made me chuckle A LOT because of the absurdity of the screenplay. The film gives you all the moments you would expect in a Hallmark movie. It has the meet cute moments, the tension, the misunderstanding, the tender reveal of love and the embrace of a new relationship. I found knowing every step of this movie kinda comforting in a weird way. I didn’t have to worry about the film making a dumb choice because the movie wasn’t going to make any choices at all. It will give you your basic cute love story and tender moments of nostalgia wrapped around Christmas. Hallmark movies know exactly what they are packaging to their audiences and they eat it up. They also find peace and warmth in it, and maybe seeing these simple love stories around Christmas that are basic and conventional is something you need after a long eight hour work day. In that regard, I think there’s a purpose and reason for Hallmark movies to exist and they are providing a good service to their audience.
As a movie, I can’t say Holiday Touchdown: A Chiefs Love Story is a good movie. But it also is delivering exactly what the target audience wants, so I have to admire it for that aspect.
Then there’s Hot Frosty, a new sensation for Netflix, becoming a hot topic of discussion. This is the definition of what they call a “water cooler” movie. What is that? This is a specific sub genre of film you would hear a coworker mention in casual conversation at the water cooler at work. This sensation of “movies that simply exist” has made some incredibly generic movies become way more successful than they have any right to be. There’s no reason for Hot Frosty to be the number one film on Netflix, but it’s streaming and it has a goofy enough concept for people to check out for morbid curiosity sake. The film stars Lacey Chabert as Kathy, a recent widow who puts a magical scarf around an incredibly buff and conventionally attractive snow sculpture played by Dustin Milligan, that then comes to life and starts running around terrorizing the town.
By terrorizing the town, I mean just doing goofy fish out of water antics Will Farrell did much better over twenty years ago in Elf. Hot Frosty takes the basic plot structure of a Hallmark movie are tries to do something new with it. It takes a more fantastical angle, filled with broad attempts of humor (see how I write attempts at humor) and tries to comment on itself and other pieces of popular culture along the way. On paper, being less conventional and trying something new with a formula is all a recipe for a movie I would appreciate, but I think Hot Frosty might contend with Madame Web as the worst movie of this year for me. Why? Because when trying to subvert expectations, Hot Frosty actually gives us more questions that take away from the film. A Chiefs Love Story is thoughtless cinema and Hot Frosty functions similarly, but it does provide questions about the logistics of the world. Hot Frosty comes off as creepy and confusing. Why did Jack the snowman come to life? Why does he know certain slang and doesn’t understand others? Why do the people in the town fully buy into the fact a snowman came to life? Why is the police so admit about arresting him with no further questions? This makes the final resolution of the movie, where our two leads end up falling for each other feel false. While the production value of Hot Frosty is significantly better than A Chiefs Love Story, the film gets so bogged down in its logistics that it ends up failing to engage the way it wants to in the first place. If they wanted to take a significantly different angle with the concept of Hot Frosty, it could work. If they just make the same simple Hallmark narrative but add in creepy and unnerving undertones, it will fail to be the thoughtless and blissful movie that A Chiefs Love Story is, making Hot Frosty one of the bigger misfires this year.
That’s my examples of two films- neither one great but one much better at being thoughtless escapism than the other, which fails at what it’s trying to execute. What are your thoughts on these films and what are some of your favorite thoughtless films you like to watch to not have to think about anything for a while?