1.5 out of 5.0 stars
“Red One,” released Nov. 15, is Hollywood’s marketing dream.
Two of the biggest stars, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Chris Evans, travel around the world with name-brand toys like Hot Wheels. Their mission is to save Santa, who is codenamed RED ONE, and played by another one of Hollywood’s biggest stars, J.K. Simmons. Callum Drift (Johnson) is a member of the North Pole’s Enforcement, Logistics and Fortification team and Santa’s right-hand man. Callum teams up with heartthrob Jack O’Malley (Evans), a deadbeat dad trickster who happens to be a master thief and hacker.
On their journey to save Christmas, they learn that even though Jack is on the Naughty List, he can change his status. Callum realizes that not everyone on the Naughty List is necessarily a bad person.
Speaking of the golden children, Johnson and Evans play their roles exactly as well as expected. They are uninspired and have plenty of that played-out, quippy Marvel dialogue. Because of the lack of passion put into the project, this film mainly comes off as a stock-standard Christmas movie with dialogue that would fit right in on the Hallmark Channel. For a film with a $250 million dollar budget, however, they probably should have hired writers who actually wanted to tell a meaningful story. Instead, the movie is full of Christmas schlock that has nothing meaningful to say. A prime example of this is the dead-serious line, “There are more people on the Naughty List than the Nice List and they don’t even care.” This, coming from the mouth of a jacked 52-year-old man being portrayed as the most serious sentiment on the planet, is a laughable excuse for character motivation that strips Callum of all credibility with the audience.
In terms of the supporting protagonists and antagonists, most of them fall short as well. Agent Garcia, Mrs. Claus and Zoe — who are marketed to be main characters — are given little to no screen time and are unimportant to the plot. Santa, despite being absent for over half of the movie, still added a nice amount of much-needed comedic value to the film because instead of the classic plump, jolly Santa that is prevalent in most Christmas media, Simmons plays a no-nonsense, ripped Santa that breaks conventions.
For the antagonists, Krampus is easily the most memorable and impactful character in the entire film. With a distinct and intimidating aura, Krampus is able to steal the show and bring a wealth of life to the movie. However, the main antagonist, Gryla the Christmas witch (Kiernan Shipka), falls flat in almost every way. She has very clear motivation from the moment she is introduced, which is that she wants to put everyone that she deems naughty into snow globes; everyone that has ever lied, jaywalked or done virtually anything bad. But why does she want such a perfect world full of nothing but do-gooders? The movie unfortunately never answers that integral question. She is just evil for the sake of being evil. She has no backstory, no reasoning for why she is doing what she is doing, and virtually no character of her own outside of her plot relevance.
The one great thing about this film, however, is how easy and enjoyable it is to watch. That is in part because of the sheer amount of genuinely fun and inventive Christmas motifs packed into the movie. The use of classic Christmas music was a nice touch. They fought snowmen using toys like Rock’em Sock’em Robots and were trapped in snow globes. On top of that, Gryla was defeated by Santa’s reindeer. This film oozes cheap Christmas nostalgia and it is not afraid to embrace it. On top of that, even though the set design and action sequences were slightly below average compared to what one might expect of the budget, Santa’s workers were all different funky creatures, with interesting design elements. It was almost reminiscent of the background characters in the “Star Wars” movies, and the slight modicum of individuality and creativity in its designs goes a long way in a movie like this.
With an overwhelming number of cliches and a clear lack of enthusiasm or invention in the performance and the script, this film fails on multiple levels. However, for a fun and festive adventure, this movie excels for anyone who needs a dose of corny, Hallmark-like Christmas spirit.
