On paper, ‘horny teens do battle with mini demon snowmen’ sounds fun, but the jokes are dumb and the references to better films only draw attention to its weaknesses
It’s teenager Zach (Chris Cavalier)’s birthday and he plans to spend it watching Highlander and, well, masturbating – but an army of miniature demon snowmen have other ideas. It is the perfect jumping off point for a mashup of Gremlins and American Pie, and for quite a chunk of time the film manages to coast along on that kind of silly guilty pleasure energy, with zippy pacing and plenty of jokes so stupid they’re funny, plus cameos from icons such as Joe Dante (director of Gremlins).
Unfortunately the comedy writing isn’t quite there, and the jokes rapidly revolve back around to so stupid they’re stupid. Similarly, the introduction of a couple of sexy nymphomaniac nuns initially seems promising – you wonder what their deal is going to be, assuming they will be more than one-dimensional sex puppets – only to find that no, that really is their full extent. Maybe there’s something refreshing about characters existing purely as eye candy, without any hypocritical woke pretence that there’s more to it than that?
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