I apologized in the title, and I apologize again here, for propagating the deluge of Christmas themed romantic and family slop on the various streaming services. Recently this is providing much needed work for Lindsay Lohan, albeit Lohan does not appear the one below, there are apparently Mean Girls references contained therein.
It being a slow week in key art, and this poster caught my eye not from utter incompetence, but rather peak banality. Design studio Concept Arts has done work in the past for Dennis Villeneuve's Dune movies and Blade Runner: 2049, Fede Alvarez's Alien: Romulus, Christopher Nolan's Interstellar, and if you go back far enough, The Coen's Brother's iconic poster for Miller's Crossing. They know what they are doing here with this generic poster for Hot Frosty, a movie you will have forgotten exists the moment you finish this column.
This design distills everything the 'fast and disposable' Christmas romance genre. Bland, good looking actors (muscles and cleavage or well tailored holiday knitwear), looking directly into the viewer eyes with a kind of empty happiness on display. A sappy, but vague pun-ish tagline, that places focus on the female viewer. Red and green colour accents. A quaint holiday dressed village in the background. An inoffensive font that gets the job done. Here, just to keep one on their spacial awareness toes, there is the string lights from nowhere to nowhere, which frame the couple.
Even the outlier of a hint of magical naughtiness with hunky snowman red and blue glow on the title card is comfortingly brought down to the level of a tacit assurance that, 'this will still be safe to have on in the background with the large TV newly purchased from Costco, with the auto-motion feature not turned off. The holiday season has begun. Sorry.
Friday One Sheet: HOT FROSTY (Sorry)