Snow Blandness
Snow Day is innocuous, nothing more.
By
far, the most creative thing about Snow Day is its clever integration of
the studio logo into the narrative at the very beginning of the film. As a man
shovels snow from his driveway, a gigantic snowball falls from the sky and
crushes his house. It's a wonderfully anarchic moment, boding well for things
to come, until the snowball morphs into the circular orange Nickelodeon logo
and everything else fades out. From there, we are treated to a field of
free-floating molecules, as sensitive teen protagonist Hal (Mark Webber)
explains to all the young 'uns in attendance how snow begins with hydrogen and
oxygen. (Fear not, kids, the educational tone doesn't continue for very long.) Pull
out, macroscopically speaking, until the molecules blend together into a lone
snowflake that falls from the sky, as Hal proceeds to tell us that we're about
to see the story of a day "that changed the lives of me and my family
forever."
By the story's end, Hal will be
telling us, "You never really know how a snow day's gonna turn out." Really? Let's test that theory. Can you possibly guess
whether or not school will be closed due to snow? Whether Hal's younger sister,
Natalie (Zena Grey), will thwart the machinations of the evil Snowplow Man
(Chris Elliott, acting like the meaner alcoholic sibling of Jim Varney's
Ernest)? Whether Hal will end up in the arms of the class babe or the longtime
platonic friend whose affections he's never noticed (Sissy Spacek's daughter,
Schuyler Fisk)? Whether Hal's meteorologist father (
Not that
younger kids have a problem with predictability in their movies.
However, parents expecting the generally smarter fare of previous Nickelodeon
efforts like Harriet the Spy and Rugrats may be disappointed that
this effort is more akin to Good Burger. Thankfully, those adults
fearing the worst of Chevy Chase will also be spared, as the man is generally
restrained here and gets at least one bona fide funny line in (that, naturally,
has been featured in the preview already): When workaholic Mom arrives home
late for dinner for the umpteenth time, Chase simply stares, and deadpans,
"And you are...?" The biggest laughs for adults, in fact, are likely
to come from Iggy Pop (yes, you read that correctly) in a cameo as an
adult-contemporary DJ who plays Al Martino records nonstop. The irony will be
lost on the Nickelodeon generation (as will a scene in which a lovelorn Hal
listens to Foreigner!), but never mind. That's what the rest of the
movie is for.
The bottom line with a movie
like this is, simply, will it shut the kids up for an hour and a half? The
answer is: probably. The adults are sufficiently buffoonish and the children
sufficiently energetic to hold an audience's interest. The film might have
created a better payoff if the evil school principal had been seen committing
some heinous acts (all he really does is laugh wickedly and mutter some
nonsense about isosceles triangles) before receiving his constant comeuppance,
but oh well. Those who have always wanted to throw snowballs at their own
principal but feared the consequences will derive ample vicarious thrills.
Primary villain Chris Elliott is not exactly at his best here (and I'm a fan of
Cabin Boy), but he gives off a sleazy aura that would probably scare
preteens if they were to meet such a character in reality. On-screen, of
course, justice is served, kid style.
There does seem to be one
notable inconsistency in the film's tone, however: The teen-romance story line
that Hal pursues is skewed to a different demographic than the slapstick
Natalie vs. the Plowman adventure. In at least two scenes, the school beauty
queen who Hal is pursuing wears see-through shirts that leave nothing to the
imagination. Maybe this is the fashion nowadays in high school, but it looks
incongruous in a Nickelodeon movie, given that the cable channel generally aims
at a preteen audience.