Post by StevePulaski on Jan 5, 2015 13:43:32 GMT -5
Snow Day (2000)
Directed by: Chris Koch
Rating: ★½
Directed by: Chris Koch
Rating: ★½
Whether you were in first grade, or a senior in high school, one of the most exciting phone calls you could ever get in the wee hours of the morning would be a canned recording of your district's superintendent informing you that school was cancelled for the day due to inclement weather. Living in the suburbs of Chicago my entire life, I vividly remember hearing reports of heavy snowfall that could potentially close schools, and going to bed those nights hoping to whatever God would listen to my ridiculous plea that I wouldn't have to go to school the following day. More often than not, it was wishful thinking on my part, due to the around-the-clock, persistent work of the snowplows, but on occasion, the snow and ice would be so bad that the school buses couldn't get through (the ultimate factor in a district's decision whether or not to close school) and I'd be blessed with great news when I woke up in the morning.
These thoughts and memories flourished as I watched Chris Koch's Snow Day, but not because the film was extracting those paradoxically warm and fuzzy feelings, but because I was so disinterested in the characters and the events occurring in the film that the only outlet I had was my overactive, nostalgic mind. This is a film that has the ability to operate like an episode of the underrated Television show Recess, which concerned a group of six schoolage children who tried to do everything they could to live up the thirty minutes of liberation they got every school day. The kids in the show were bright, developed, adamant about sticking together, and clever in their abilities to stay one step ahead of their school administration. The children in Snow Day are a gaggle of underdeveloped and ill-behaved brats that mistake loud, ribald behavior and baffling choices as likability and logical motivations.
The film concerns a group of young schoolkids in Syracuse, New York, who do everything they can to keep their school closed after heavy snowfall, which involves stopping the fearless snowplow driver (Chris Elliot) from getting through to plow the streets. One of the kids is Hal (Mark Webber), who spends the day trying to win the heart of his sweetheart Claire Bonner (Emmanuelle Chriqui), with the help of his best friend, Lane Leonard (Schuyler Fisk), who is secretly repressing feelings for him after a lifelong friendship. Then we have Natalie (Zana Grey), Hal's younger sister, and her two friends Wayne (Josh Peck), and Chet (Jade Yorker), who work to stop the aforementioned snowplow driver from plowing the sidestreets leading to the school. Finally, there's Hal and Natalie's father Tom (Chevy Chase), who works as a Television meteorologist, spends the day attempting to cover the record snowfall in a quicker manner than his competitor Chad Symmonz (John Schneider), both of whom fighting for their own job security.
The biggest problem with Snow Day is it doesn't have a central focus, despite one pragmatically assuming that the effort to take out the snowplow driver would be the film's primary focus. The issue here is that the film doesn't invest enough time in the efforts to stop said driver, nor does it concoct many setups or provide much development to the idea that would allow one to believe what is actually happening in efforts to stop this man. Snow Day is simply a collection of subplots that make less a movie and more of an anthology film, strung together from comedic odds and ends, never materializing to something of a collective whole.
Some of Snow Day's greatest sins could be forgiven if the film was the least bit humorous. Alas, however, Snow Day focuses on the kinds of things people with no knowledge of kids think kids say but never actually do; with that comes a barrage of stale, foreseeable humor and monotonous slapstick that never amounts to anything that is memorable in a long term sense. Even veteran actors like Chase and Elliot cannot save the project with their presence, for their characters have been hamfisted into pure stupidity and childishness beyond what should be acceptable for them as actors.
Snow Day is a film bearing very little wit or craft in its writing and its characters. It's more or a less an assembly of parts, characters, situations, and subplots searching for a bigger picture to function in. It's the equivalent of someone dumping a toolbox all over the floor, with wrenches and hammers representing the actors, and the screws, nuts, bolts, and other connective devices representing things like writing, transitions, and characters, and hoping they'll all work together before their eyes and churn out something of untold greatness.
Starring: Mark Webber, Emmanuelle Chriqui, Zena Grey, Chevy Chase, Chris Elliott, Schuyler Fisk, Jean Smart, Josh Peck, Jade Yorker, and John Schneider. Directed by: Chris Koch.