If this was just a straight show about snow carving this could have been interesting, but it's just a mess!
Good points: The carvings are nice.
Bad points: The 'mayor' is incredibly annoying and weird, unfunny, and sort of putting on an accent - but really only when he says the word 'competition.' Maybe the guy playing the character is well-known in America, but from this performance I wouldn't be in a rush to see his other work.
The teams themselves aren't expert snow carvers, so they're really just following instructions from the real experts they have there to help them. The experts also blatantly decided the designs well in advance, so it's less of a team competition and more of a 'snow by numbers' deal.
The show spends most of the screen time on things that are not snow carving. Interviewing the teams is a good 50% of the show, and then you have the judges chatting and saying basically nothing.
One of the two judges seems to basically be there because he used to be the president's chef (and ice carved in his spare time). I guess by that token I am fully qualified to judge because I also work in a totally unrelated field, but I occasionally build snowmen.
Plus there are other random elements that add nothing to the show, such as an animated portion that I guess is supposed to hearken back to the Rankin Bass animations? Those shows are basically unknown outside of the US, so that falls flat for me too, but it also just wasted screen time.
Kermit also felt like a waste of screen time, although I do love Kermit usually he was just anothe distraction. Plus they also didn't bother getting the regular Kermit voice, so he didn't even sound right.
Overall it feels like the producers just threw in everything they could think of that might signify 'Christmas' (to an American audience at least.) It was trite, over-produced, fake and annoying - but the sculptures themselves were fine.
Good points: The carvings are nice.
Bad points: The 'mayor' is incredibly annoying and weird, unfunny, and sort of putting on an accent - but really only when he says the word 'competition.' Maybe the guy playing the character is well-known in America, but from this performance I wouldn't be in a rush to see his other work.
The teams themselves aren't expert snow carvers, so they're really just following instructions from the real experts they have there to help them. The experts also blatantly decided the designs well in advance, so it's less of a team competition and more of a 'snow by numbers' deal.
The show spends most of the screen time on things that are not snow carving. Interviewing the teams is a good 50% of the show, and then you have the judges chatting and saying basically nothing.
One of the two judges seems to basically be there because he used to be the president's chef (and ice carved in his spare time). I guess by that token I am fully qualified to judge because I also work in a totally unrelated field, but I occasionally build snowmen.
Plus there are other random elements that add nothing to the show, such as an animated portion that I guess is supposed to hearken back to the Rankin Bass animations? Those shows are basically unknown outside of the US, so that falls flat for me too, but it also just wasted screen time.
Kermit also felt like a waste of screen time, although I do love Kermit usually he was just anothe distraction. Plus they also didn't bother getting the regular Kermit voice, so he didn't even sound right.
Overall it feels like the producers just threw in everything they could think of that might signify 'Christmas' (to an American audience at least.) It was trite, over-produced, fake and annoying - but the sculptures themselves were fine.