Snow Day

...that isn’t based on the premises that fart and belch jokes are good for children and it’s permissible to teach them that assault, vandalism, and theft are okay as long as they’re done to people with bad teeth.

Starting with the near-universal (sorry all you folks in Houston, San Diego, and Tampa) realization that the twin windfalls of getting an unplanned break from school and sudden availability of soft, biodegradable raw material for all kinds of (mostly) harmless mischief are one of the neater things that can happen to a kid, Snow Day looks in on one family in Syracuse on the brink of near-mythic adventure. Dad (Chevy Chase) is the capable, longsuffering weatherman at the third-rated station in a three-station market. Mom (Jean Smart) is a workaholic exec working on a Beijing soft-drink account. Son Hal (Mark Webber, from Drive Me Crazy) is pining over unattainable gorgeous rich girl Claire (model/actress Emmanuelle Criqui, who’s either way, way too mature to be playing high-school age, or she recently found a set of Britney Spears Signature Implants in her Cracker Jack, because she continually, proudly beams as if her chest is about to go off any second – don’t you need a permit to carry those in New York?) while his best girl-bud Lane (Sissy Spacek’s daughter Schuyler Fisk) is unknowingly the true love of his life. That leaves daughter Natalie (newcomer Zena Grey), who’s suffering sibling neglect due to Hal’s new hobby, to single-handedly plot against the one entity who could keep a day of no-school from stretching into two-days of no-school when an unexpected bear-choker of a snowstorm arrives: the dreaded Snowplow Man (Chris Elliot, sporting, as in There’s Something About Mary, problems with his face, only this time it’s moldy, cratered dentition), who is whispered to grind up kids for rock salt and use their braces for tire chains.

Throw in subplots about a school principal who attracts snowballs the way Jupiter attracts comets, Claire’s knuckle-dragger boyfriend, and an ice-skating rink manager (Iggy Pop, who also did a voice in Nickelodeon’s The Rugrats Movie; now there’s a testament to what a strange world we live in – would could have imagined thirty years ago that the guy who became famous by waving his willy at David Bowie and crawling on broken glass would grow up to play in children’s movies?) obsessed with the music of lounge singer Al Martino, and you get something that may be marginally more watchable for adults, but falls pretty short in the life-lessons department. The kids commit enough petty crimes – crashing cars, stealing vehicles, plowing pedestrians -- en route to their light-hearted adventures to spend the rest of their lives in juvie lockup, while Claire struts about innocently in swimsuits (How do they manage that in the middle of the winter? Easy -- she’s on the diving team, and insists on practicing even when school is closed.) and jogbras.

At least Nick insists that their actors say “butt” instead of “ass” (a lot). Plus, Snow Day sounds more innocuous that Bomb-Threat Day, which we also used to look forward to when I was a kid since they always seemed to happen in warm weather when some teacher was giving a big test. D+

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