If The White Lotus gave you a new appreciation for the culture and people of Thailand, perhaps you’d like to root for the country’s young representatives as they compete for national pride and personal redemption in a snow-sculpting contest held in Japan. Enter Team Frozen Hot Boys. When a teacher at a Thai juvenile detention facility sees a two-pronged opportunity – to inspire her “young saplings” with a goal, and to visit her estranged father in Sapporo – the race is on for a group nobody believed in, from an equatorial country that doesn’t know snow, to compete in and maybe even win the cold-weather contest. And along the way, if the experience melts a few icy hearts, then maybe they were always gonna be winners.
The Gist: At Benjatham Regional Juvenile Vocational Center, Miss Chom (Natapohn Tameeruks) teaches artistic handicrafts to wayward boys. It isn’t the life she dreamed of – to use her own artistic talent, like her father used to encourage her. But it’s the life she’s got. And while she’s good at keeping the rough-and-tumble gen pop at Benjatham in line, Chom grates against the leadership of An (Kanjanaporn Plodpai), the facility’s administrator, who also happens to be her mother.
There is no doubt these kids did bad things. One attacked his stepdad to protect his mom. Another used his size and strength to conduct home invasions. Still another burned down the last juvie place that tried to hold him. But Chom still sees potential in angry, artistic Jab (Nuttawat Thanataviepraserth), jumbo-sized Toom (Piyaphong Dammunee), wondering Win (Punnanon Treewannakul), her own student sidekick Boy (Chatchai Chinnasri), and even Jab’s rival, the similarly artistic Jo (Sadanont Durongkavarojana). And she sees even more potential when she learns there is a winter festival in Sapporo, Japan, where her father now lives. Chom sets out to transform her woodworking class into competitive sculptors of snow and ice.
It will take convincing. Of her mother, and Benjatham’s financing committee. Whoever heard of a “hot as hell” country like Thailand competing in an international snow-shaping contest? And Chom has to convince the boys themselves to participate, which she does in part with a disarming impersonation of Elsa in Frozen and Idina Menzel singing “Let it Go.” But the burgeoning team must convince each other, too, that they are more visible than their delinquent status which dominates.
Once Team Frozen Hot Boys is born – you knew it would be – Frozen Hot Boys commits to the usual, predictable round of training and preparation sequences. And while Miss Chom and her charges learn a lot about making fragile substances into high flying birds, they also bond with each other over their shared rejections. Chom’s testy relationships with her father, who started a new life without her, and her resentful mother; and the boys, each of them discarded by a society who only sees their misdeeds.
It all comes down to the snow festival in Sapporo, their skills as artists in a medium of snow and ice, and whether Miss Chom and the Frozen Hot Boys will rise like a phoenix over all of the adversity they have encountered.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of? Cool Runnings vibes, obviously. A different group of disparate personalities also banded together for a common goal in the 2022 Thai comedy The Lost Lotteries. And Frozen Hot Boys co-writer Rangsima Akarawiwat penned Ready Set Love, which Decider called a funnier, competitive dating version of Squid Game.
Performance Worth Watching: As Jab, Nuttawat Thanataviepraserth has youthful disaffection down pat. Which makes it enjoyable, as the team coalesces, to watch him let Jab’s true personality emerge.
Memorable Dialogue: Amazing what a little investment in the well-being of others can do. “Our elders look at us like garbage, something to be thrown away,” the boys tell Miss Chom. “You’re the first to really care.”
Sex and Skin: None.
Our Take: In its wholehearted embrace of formula, Frozen Hot Boys finds a win in the details. You’re familiar with the setup. When these criminal boys arrive at Benjatham, it’s just another dead-end for their delinquent lives. And their teacher has her own life problems, which weigh on her ability to see a way forward. But thrown together, and with a growing amount of mutual support, as they become a team, they all realize that what they thought they could never find was right in front of them the whole time. Formula! Its familiarity can be a comfort. But formula is most effective when there are personalities to carry it, and FHB also has a few in Miss Chom, Jab, and Toom.
We liked the stabs at absurdist comedy that pepper Frozen Hot Boys, like sound effects accompanying pratfalls, and the entire audition sequence for the Sapporo winter festival, where the team’s improvisational skills shine and Nimit Lugsamepong plays a hilariously self-possessed financial benefactor. But as the inevitable pressures of the big competition finally arrived, we also liked how it further inspired the distinct friendships within this crew. Those details matter more than the result. And inside the film’s standard framing, the radiance of Natapohn Tameeruks as Miss Chom, Jab’s reticent-turned-invested nature, and even Toom’s big dude with a heart of gold act – it all stands out, and helps FHB overcome its formulaic limitations.
Our Call: Stream It, because maybe you’re in need of a little inspiration. When a movie presents a group of thrown-together heroes, that they will overcome many obstacles to win the day is expected. What Frozen Hot Boys offers is a fair amount of heartwarming personal moments inside those expectations of formula, as an unlikely crew creates its own camaraderie.
Johnny Loftus (@glennganges) is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift.
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