Dashing Through the Snow – More Disposable Holiday Fare

Dashing Through the Snow is a new Christmas themed family comedy directed by Tim Story and releasing on Disney + starring Lil Rel Howery, Chris ‘Ludacris’ Bridges, and Teyonah Parris. The plot follows divorced social worker Eddie (Ludacris) who despises Christmas and inadvertently takes his daughter Charlotte (Madison Skye Validum) on a ride along with him on Christmas Eve where they meet a man named Nick (Howery) who helps Eddie understand and see the magic in Christmas again. In the end, the film is a perfectly harmless and inoffensive watch that young kids can enjoy over the holidays thanks to quite a few charming and heartfelt moments that help elevate it but for the most part, it is unfortunately another basic and instantly forgettable Christmas comedy that fails to put its impressive cast’s talents to good use.

Starting in a fairly familiar fashion, though with an unexpected humorous twist, the film merely devolves into a generic adventure featuring overly-familiar themes and paper-thin characters over the course of a story offering very few laughs despite being technically a comedy. The adventure the characters are forced to go on just isn’t all that exciting or engaging especially for a Christmas film, and is something that has been done time and time again across the Christmas genre. Clocking in at a breezy yet uneventful 89 minutes, it seems as if the filmmakers did everything they possibly could to stretch the runtime out to get as close to the 90-minute mark as they could. The most blatant example is the inclusion of a lame villain who serves no purpose whatsoever.

Despite the best efforts of the cast, the villain subplot is mostly terrible while every time the film turns to them, it screeches to a halt and becomes a bit of a bore to watch. In addition to that, it doesn’t help that nothing of note happens along the characters’ journey. Considering the potential of its subject matter, the end result feels surprisingly lazy and uninspired. One can’t help but wonder if that was due to a time or budgetary restrictions. Meanwhile, Parris is one of the most exciting actors working in Hollywood right now, starting to pop up in more and more high-profile projects. An easy assumption would be to see her have a decent sized role in here, however, she is simply wasted here. Though she adds so much warmth whenever she’s on screen, she has very few opportunities to show it as Eddie’s wife Allison. Along those lines, the majority of the supporting cast are stuck in forgettable roles.

As disposable of a Christmas comedy it is, the film still has some bright spots. The biggest one is the casting of Howery and Ludacris who together, create an inspired dynamic thanks to their strong chemistry. In spite of the subpar material they had to work with, they both showed up fully committed. As Nick, Howery continues to tap into his successful history of playing fast talking and charismatic characters with hearts of gold and Ludacris, as Eddie, plays well off him in a decent straight man role. It ultimately may not be as heartwarming or sweet natured as the best Christmas films, it has its heart in the right place.

At the end of the day, one can do a lot worse than Dashing Through the Snow but with so many better options to watch around the holidays, it doesn’t offer enough to warrant a recommendation. While it is nice to see Disney make more smaller scale films harkening back to their heyday of the 1990s to the early 2000s, that nostalgia factor can’t quite make up for its many flaws.

still courtesy of Disney

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Connor Carey

www.connorsmoviereviews.com/