The bells of Christmas are beginning to ring again, and with that comes another Christmas movie hitting theatres across the globe. This year’s offering isn’t an animated musical, a Dr. Seuss retelling, or a childlike piece of nostalgia. Jake Kasdan (“Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle,” “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story”) has instead brought us this year’s Christmas adventure in the form of a big, corporatized, buff Santa Claus, a highly skilled protection group called E.L.F., hacking, kidnapping, Christmas witches, Krampuses, and giant murderous snow men. This is “Red One.”
The film follows Jack O’Malley, played by Chris Evans (“Knives Out,” “Captain America: The Winter Soldier”), a skilled dark web hacker who is forced to help M.O.R.A. (Mythological Oversight and Restoration Authority) director Zoe Harlow, played by Lucy Liu (“Charlie’s Angels (2000),” “Kung Fu Panda”), after Santa Claus, played by J.K. Simmons (“Whiplash,” “Juno”), is kidnapped from the North Pole. He’s then forced to team up with Callum Drift, played by Dwayne Johnson (“Black Adam,” “Moana”), to track down and save Santa from the Christmas witch Grýla, played by Kiernan Shipka (“Mad Men,” “The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina”).
To the credit of Kasdan and writers Chris Morgan (“Wanted,” “Furious 7”) and Hiram Garcia, there’s clearly a lot of effort that’s gone into crafting this new interpretation of Santa Claus and various other holiday fables. Having them all exist at the same time, in the same world, sequestered from each other is a novel idea, and the film is at its best when it's blending those ideas together. Unfortunately, the plot they’re blended within is a pretty generic action movie that fails to inspire the slightest bit of wonder.
Johnson feels woefully miscast here, but not for the reasons you’d assume. Yes, he does fit this version of the character fine enough, but the film itself feels as though it needs a different version of this character. He plays everything so seriously, when a film about the kidnapping of Santa Claus just feels sapped of any fun when you play it this straight. Evans is hamming it up, playing a more backseat role to the action lead of Johnson, and his quips and comments feel fine enough half the time and lazy the rest. Simmons is sleepwalking through a role like this, coasting off his charms and then literally just disappearing for 85% of the film. Liu and Shipka aren’t terrible, but they fail to make any kind of impact whatsoever.
Despite a massive 250-million-dollar budget, so many of the film’s numerous effects heavy sequences come across as unfinished. Some green screen bits look downright amateurish, and an early chase sequence in the North Pole just looks like Johnson was overlayed into a video game cutscene. There are moments that shine, a sequence in Krampus’s house, full of practically crafted creature suits and faces inside of a practically built and lit castle looks absolutely fantastic and is by far the best part of the film. It also makes the later moments, like when that practically designed Krampus faces off against a completely digital creature look even worse than they already do.
It would be one thing if the film didn’t look the best or had some superfluous characters. But for a film that’s aiming to be about Christmas, the spirit of the season, and the sense of childlike whimsy inspired by Santa to come across this soullessly is a massive problem. There are multiple times where things happen that border on absolute absurdity, and yet the film takes it all with a completely straight face. It begs for some lightness, to stop taking itself so seriously. Watching Johnson turn a rubber chicken alive, talk to it directly, and toss it out to some fierce-some hounds with a deadpan look and not a single joke cracked about it, just feels so disconnected from reality. It’s the sort of film that does inspire laughter, but laughing at it, not with it.
“Red One” is certainly packed with plenty of fluff and stuff for the holidays, but it fails to inspire anything other than fleeting amusement, often times at its own self-serious expense rather than because of any genuine entertainment. Yes, it is technically an original film, but it's clearly made as a franchise kickoff first, and genuine piece of singular entertainment second. Evans is fine, Johnson is fine, the effects are mostly fine, and the tale is inoffensive if not memorable in the slightest. It has all the candy-colored coating of a freshly wrapped Christmas gift, it looks like something fun, and yet unwrapping it just reveals a hollow cardboard box. Plain, uninspired, and lacking in the most important thing for an adventure like this: fun and whimsy. 2/5
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