9. Keaton's Cool Goes Too Far - Jack Frost
Christmas films often get an easy ride, partly because showing a Christmas tree against the backdrop of snow is deeply evocative, and partly because everyone spends a good portion of the three weeks they are traditionally aired inebriated from over-strong Egg Nog and morning time Mulled Wine. But there are some that don't deserve the protection. Jack Frost is one of Michael Keaton's unfortunately characteristic dips in form (more of which later,) that combine with the exceptional films he has made to make his career trajectory look like a particularly perilous rollercoaster. Not only is the film dripping with manipulative sentimentality (which somehow allows it a special romantic status, despite the fact that it is horribly mean-spirited and nightmarish) it also features the most repulsive creature in Hollywood history, to paraphrase Roger Ebert. And therein lies the issue - for as iconic and engaging as Beetlejuice and Batman were for Keaton, Jack Frost was the ultimate counter-point. He's a sickly-sweet personification of good humanity, inadequate fatherhood and chocolate box sentimentality, wrapped up in a marhsmallowy body, and the whole sorry affair threatens to destroy Keaton's infinite cool as Batman, despite the casting of three of Frank Zappa's children.
The Low Point It's either when you realise that you haven't picked up the horror movie of the same title, which at least self-consciously embraces how awful it is, or when you find yourself bawling by the end, manipulated by the ladles of sugar and Hallmark card emotion into really feeling.