Since some of you might be walking in a winter wonderland by now (not me though, I live in SoCal and it’s about 80 degrees here, SUCKERS), Margaux and I decided to take a look at 2000’s Snow Day for this week’s Bad Movie Review. This was a terrible, terrible mistake.
Trevor: So apparently anything can happen on a snow day. I think that was news to both of us.
Margaux: And we also got several, scientific explanations on how snow is made – cause this movie doubles as shitty 4th grade movie a lazy teacher can put on.
Trevor: If a teacher ever puts this on, they should be fired immediately, tenure be damned. Unless it was a film professor showing his class how not to make a movie.
Margaux: Does Nickelodeon still produce movies? This is the second I’ve seen in as many weeks and kind of explains why kids are so stupid. I know Snow Day isn’t for my current demo but still, this movie was painfully dumb. Like, dumber than the way Beth died on The Walking Dead.
Trevor: If they do, I’m sure their head of development has about 1,000 unreturned voicemails from Kel Mitchell. I was 12 when Snow Day came out, arguably the target audience (maybe a little older), and I remember seeing the trailers and thinking that it looked fucking stupid. It’s like, can 9/11 get here already? Cause I already prefer that.
Margaux: I was surprised at the volume of celebrity cameos, that’s totally lost on kids – ie: Iggy Pop?!?, for Snow Day. Chevy Chase slumming it, okay – fine. But Pam GOD DAMN Greier?! Why?! Besides dollars?
Trevor: Not to mention Chris Elliott. I guess the director was trying to get a total blackout on his “people who mean nothing to kids” Bingo card.
Hold on, lemme go over the plot for the readers: there’s a snow day and everyone loses their shit. Roll credits.
Margaux: And this indisputable notion, as you mentioned before, that on a snow day – anything can happen. By the way, the movie takes place in fucking Syracuse, New York. Now, I’ve never been there but I know enough to know that it snows fucking 6 months out of the year, so it’s total anarchy during winter up there or nah?
Trevor: Haha, just total Mad Max shit whenever it snows.
Everyone in this movie was crazy, stupid, unlikable, or all three. Usually all three. Let’s start with the “lead” (?), Hal Brandston, who’s a fucking creep the likes of which we haven’t seen since Luke Wilson in The Third Wheel. He follows Claire around ALL DAY, making over-the-top romantic gestures, but to be fair, all the guys in this town are kinda creepy. When word gets out that Claire broke up with her boyfriend, what looks like the entire dick-possessing population of Syracuse turns up on her lawn, like a psychotic tween Say Anything. (In their defense, Snow Day goes out of its way to sexualize Emmanuelle Chriqui, who, yes, is beautiful, but also playing a 16- or 17-year-old.)
Margaux: By the end of the movie, I wrote in my notes, “how does Claire not have with several restraining orders by the end of this day?” When we’re first introduced to Hal, he tells the audience (because he’s the narrator) that he loooooves Claire so much, he knows how many times a day she blinks. And I only got more uncomfortable for there on out, it was like listening to a baby Elliot Rodgers, I thought he was going to shoot up the school if he didn’t get to kiss Claire on a day where “anything is possible.” His obsession and the celebration of it was truly disturbing FOR A KIDS MOVIE. The whole thing was incredibly ominous.
More to the point though, not a single person, even Hal’s kid sister Natalie, is redeemable or likeable. You wish nothing but a plague to take out this entire pathetic town where Chevy Chase is their least respected weather man.
Trevor: Oh man, we are so in sync right now. In my notes I wrote “Is anyone supposed to be likable?” If they were, this movie failed, hard. And those kids – led by Natalie – were the worst. They’re seen early on throwing snowballs (that they saved from last year in a cooler) at the principal, who they hate, because #school. They never said why they hated him. Did Natalie want it to snow just so she could fuck with this guy? WHY? I NEED ANSWERS. Fuck.
And then the snow plow man shows up, who I guess is above the law, because he just smashes peoples’ shit with impunity, and even kidnaps that fat kid and TIES HIM TO THE PLOW. No bullshit, that’s how someone would die on Sons of Anarchy.
Magraux: AFTER HE SENSUALLY EATS FRIES AND KETCHUP OVER HIS FAT, TERRIFIED BODY. I wish I kept score of the near-rape and straight up sexual assault that transpired in this crapfest.
But no wonder Hal and Natalie are complete fuckin’ shitheads, Chevy Chase (their father) gives their Mother (Jean Smart, staring at the bottom) a dollar, like a cheap stripper, over the family dinner table so she won’t answer her phone. Cause she’s a busy-business lady who’s too busy to pay proper attention to her horrible family. The Brandstons were so dysfunctional, they made holidays with my family look like the damn Cleavers.
Trevor: And the other Brandston kid, Randy – he was on the spectrum, right? Had to be. He drinks soup through a straw, he covers himself in blue marker ink, and at one point he’s seen with his head in a lunchbox, pounding against the wall, over and over. I know “random” was supposed to be “funny” in 2000, but fourteen years later it’s hard to look at that and not think that he needs serious help. It actually kind of bummed me out. (There’s your DVD quote.)
Margaux: HOLY SHIT!!! I WROTE IN MY NOTES, “RANDY IS DEF ON THE SPECTRUM, NO Q.” We are in sync on this, maybe we really are best friends…
Hahahahaha Snow Day was had such an unsettling and off putting tone, Randy was sort of the embodiment of that tone in a character.
Oh my God you were right, when you watch Snow Day – IT watches you….
Trevor: So it turns out the whole time that Lane (Schuyler Fisk) has a crush on Hal because of [REASON NOT FOUND]. This obviously doesn’t work because the movie doesn’t even say Lane’s name until maybe an hour in. I had to keep checking IMDb to keep all the identical white people straight.
Margaux: Well, it was a common theme in movies that the hero gets the girl and rejects her for the best friend, who was always there, instead. That plot turn/device was about as subtle as piano falling. And probably the only part that did make sense for the characters – barring the hi-dive meet-cute.
What didn’t make sense, why SnowPlowMan (who is credited liked that in the movie, all one word. No hashtag) has a crow (magpie?) named Dorie has his sidekick. It was like the writer was going off the “random” humor and since he was also possibly a rapist, only heard YES when everyone was telling NO to that idea.
Trevor: Snow Day is the “yes” to everyone else’s “no.” Literally nothing about this movie works. And the more you point it out, the more I’m convinced that SnowPlowMan could be the star of a much darker, much more rapey sequel. I guess he deserved to…freeze to death? I’m pretty sure that’s how it ended.
Also, this fucking movie is so stupid that it can’t remember that it gives SPM a name? It’s Rodger! He says it right to Mrs. Brandston after he’s kidnapped that hefty child.
Margaux: The fat friend is ALWAYS sacrificed – serves you right for not being good at P.E.
The problem with SPM, and he had many, was that he wasn’t menacing at all. Like you pointed out with the principal character, it’s like the kids terrorized him, not the other way around. His only friend is fucking bird, somethings not right with him! Kind of reminded me of Sinbad in Jingle All The Way, if this movie wasn’t aimed at kids, he’d of probably gone a much darker way.
Snow Day was like a bad parody of every 90s-2000s cliche imaginable. Like The Third Wheel, but now the whole family can be weirdly depressed after watching it!
Trevor: I will say, though, that SPM has a cherry gig – he’s been driving that snow plow all day on the city’s dime. You know how much OT he’s gonna clock for that? Assuming he doesn’t succumb to the elements. (Natalie is in so much trouble – she straight up stole a city vehicle, inadvertently caused the destruction of another car, and masterminded a plan that left a man tied to a sign in the freezing cold, with nothing really around. He’s gonna die. There are no two ways about it.)
Margaux: There was a wonderfully 80s moment that made me lol. When Hal challenges Claire’s ex-boyfriend to a snowmobile race down a hill and the ex keeps introducing Hal to his friends that are going to kick his ass, only for them to Sonny Bono’ed. It was the only joyful 5 minutes in this 85 minute shit storm.
Trevor: Using the well-worn trope of the psychopathic bully. I’m so glad our high school wasn’t the war zone that books, movies, and TV made it out to be. On the real though, riding a snowmobile looks fun as hell.
Margaux: Well, next snow day in California you should go for a snowmobile ride cause as we’ve learned, anything can happen on a snow day.
Trevor: Hopefully that includes a vortex opening up that will erase all memories of watching Snow Day.
You wanna talk stars? Or should we rate this in feces?
Margaux: I’ve taken more impressive shits than Snow Day, they don’t deserve to be rated in feces. I’d say ½ star, maybe for the weird celeb cameos. Or watching Chevy Chase humiliate himself in a grass skirt while telling the weather.
Trevor: Somehow, after watching this, I feel less dignified than Chevy Chase.
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