How bad is it? It's fair to middling.
Should you see it? Only if teaching Scandinavian folklore to children.
I didn't understand why anyone thought this was a terrible film until I saw that the MST3K crew attacked a version of it called "Jack Frost" which is a very poor edit that I've now seen only in their show. In the original, it's a charming folktale with some bizarre elements, but nothing stranger than our own folktales. A young woman with a tyrannical stepmom overcomes magical obstacles to be with her true love (who frankly doesn't seem worth the effort). There's slapstick, there's a cannibal witch, there's a house with bird legs, there's Father Mushroom, Old Man Winter, gnomish bandits
and bad family dynamics. Nothing really wrong with any of this, and it's filmed well - it was just very badly edited for American audiences.
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