Snow (2004)

Excellent but underrated film

Absolutely Fantastic

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

Not a super Christmas movie but entertaining enough. Nick looses a young reindeer (Buddy) while trying to teach it to fly. Nick's sled won't fly with only seven reindeer. So what happened to Donner, Blitzen, and the rest? Rudolph where are you? It gets tranquilized by an a-hole hunter and he places it in a small zoo because he is hot for the zoo keeper. So Nick shows up and tries to teach the reindeer to fly. He has to take a room at the boarding house where the zoo keeper is, gee what a poser. There is the high light of the movie is the young precocious boy, Hector. He is of course advanced beyond his years. He is the first to find out the truth about Nick and helps him out. In a twist though the whole Santa thing is based on an ancient spell cast on a miserly man that has come down through the ages. Passed on from father to son, ad infinitum. So they rescue Buddy, Nick asks Sandy (the zoo keeper) to come with him to the north pole where she will be under the same spell. She declines because of the animals at the zoo so he goes. Then he shows up at her house and guess what? She decides to go with him after all. An okay movie but(?).

I return again to the special plane of suffering known as made for TV Christmas movies. In this place, you will find alcoholics, children who talk like creepy adults, homely love interests, and D-List celebrities. In this particular movie, JD's brother from Scrubs is Nick Snowden, an Ersatz Santa Claus. The homely love interest is Sandy, a maladjusted zoo employee in California.Whoo boy. This one really takes the bad storytelling cake. Picture if you will, a world where a professional hunter can not only capture a wild reindeer instead of transporting the deer requested from a farm by the zoo with dodgy paperwork with no repercussions, but can also harass, stalk and in many other ways be a complete creepy lunatic and no one calls the police or so much as pushes him away. Picture a world where a woman can display a regular fondness for Christmas but become an inexplicable angry wench when someone takes Christmas decorations that she has stored in the attic and put them on display in her lawn and around the boarding house she resides in for no good reason (my family really loved Christmas and they died is not a good reason.). A world where a spinster rejects the compliments and advances of a charming single man and treats him like a stalker for daring to compliment her. Picture a world where the mythical North Pole is simultaneously not of this world and very literally part of this world. Imagine in you can, a child who actively hits on a 30-something woman. Are you bothered yet? The people responsible for this movie want you to find this all whimsical and good holiday fun.This movie is so aggressively stupid that I started to believe it had achieved awareness and malevolence and was actively trying to hurt me because I knew things and kept trying to insist logic and sense should exist within its framework, but my protests were drowned in a sea of poorly timed slapstick, awkward romantic tension, and forced drama. I knew that I had begun my descent into madness anew when the hunter contacted a poaching hobbyist so that he could sell him the rights to shoot a flying reindeer rather than reveal the animal's nature to the world at large and sell it to research or charge circuses to showcase it, or literally ANY other thing you can do with a flying reindeer that you have caged for ready transport and the money and means to do said transporting. No, forget that. I knew where I was when Ugly Mcvacantsmile got all ticked off about the Christmas decorations. Also the CG in this movie is completely laughable and the soundtrack hurt my sanity points directly with no saving throw.

This is a very light hearted sweet story. It's familiar territory in Christmas movies lately for Santa to find a girl friend, but this movie manages a fresh and pleasant approach.A lot of the credit goes to the principals Tom Cavanaugh (Nick) and Ashley Williams (Sandy), they are both very likable and well cast for this story. The obligatory bad-guy Buck provides both the unwanted suitor (of Sandy) motif and the mean vicious selfish clod as he rips off a deer and sells it. Guess what? It's one of Santa's reindeer ("in-training"), and Nick is the Jolly Ol' Elf searching for him incognito. He rooms at a boarding house, and animal-lover Sandy is a neighbor. She, Nick, and other tenants are all close, and the inevitable romance sparks.All plot lines used before, even the "skeptics refueling their faith" idea, but it's fun, because of a bright script and an amiable cast. A good movie to drink hot chocolate while sitting next to a fireplace fire.

I thought that this movie was extremely sweet and fun loving. Who could not love this movie? It really gets you into the spirit of the holidays and giving. Tom Cavanagh and Ashley Williams were magnificent and Jackie Burroughs was just as wonderful as she was in "Road to Avonlea" which is another great family show. I recommend this movie for anyone anywhere anytime. I wish there were some more romantic comedies like this one. Tom and Ashley had great chemistry together. I wish they would do another film together. I think the innocence of the movie is what captures most people. Shouldn't love be so innocent, shouldn't life?