Yes, I am aware that I have admitted in the past to having a fairly low tolerance for most Christmas-related entertainments, though I am always willing to embrace genuinely wonderful ones like It’s a Wonderful Life, Miracle on 34th St. and Gremlins. That said, I want to assure that when I say that Red One is one of the most insufferable and literally unwatchable (even more so if you elect to view it in the 4DX format, according to colleagues braver than I) examples of the genre, I am not indulging in more hyperbole than usual. Here is a film that comes closer to making the likes of Jingle All the Way and The Polar Express seem palatable than anything I can recall in a very long time. Even Krampus himself could not have conjured up something as grotesque as this monstrosity and if he did, I would be willing to bet that it would have had more charm than this leaden load ever manages to muster.
On the eve of the startlingly buffed-up Santa (J.K. Simmons) heading out on his annual journey, his head of security, Callum Drift (Dwayne Johnson) has grown despondent over the meanness creeping into the season—naughty list numbers have spiked—and has determined that this will be his last ride. Before that can happen, however, Santa is snatched by a mysterious band of terrorists and Callum, with the full force of MORA (Mythological Oversight and Restoration Authority)—a covert government agency under the command of Zoe (Lucy Liu) is off to find him. After determining that Santa’s whereabouts were unknowingly supplied to the kidnapper—who turns out to be Gryla (Kiernan Shipka), a ancient Scandinavian witch determined to usurp Santa’s powers to teach those on the naughty list a real lesson—by cynical hacker Jack O’Malley (Chris Evans), he is forcibly pressed into service to help track her down and rescue the big guy and—Spoiler Alert—maybe get that bit of holiday redemption that he clearly needs.
In other words, what we have is a bizarre amalgamation of Arthur Christmas, The Night the Reindeer Died (the cheerfully over-the-top pseudo-special that memorably opened Scrooged, one of countless films you are advised to watch before this one) and, oddly enough, Halloween III: Season of the Witch that makes little sense, offers little in the way of genuine warmth, wit or holiday spirit and which is so visually drab and clumsy-looking that the only thing about the enterprise that counts as a genuine surprise is the fact that it somehow cost Amazon $250 million to bring it to the screen. The script by Chris Morgan is a hollow bit of pro-forma product that takes a storyline that might have made for a vaguely passable animated holiday special (with plenty of room for the all-important toy commercials) and stretches it out to two full and unconscionable hours by adding in lots of extraneous plot threads, such as the whole naughty list issue and bad dad Jack’s estrangement from his son (the extremely bland Wesley Kimmel, who seems to have been cast solely to ensure plenty of mentions on his uncle’s late night talk show), tiresome action scenes indifferently staged by director Jake Kasdan (who once upon a time made Zero Effect, a film as wonderful as this one is shitty) and featuring balky-looking CGI effects (this was apparently originally meant to premiere on Amazon Prime and would have looked tacky even in those reduced circumstances) and lazy banter between the two leads, playing roles virtually indistinguishable from all the other streaming fodder they have done in the last few years.
Even as a cinematic babysitter designed to keep the wee ones occupied while their parents wrap up the presents, Red One is a catastrophic failure—it lacks the bright colors and cheerful humor that might normally grab them and is probably too violent and foul-mouthed for younger viewers anyway. This is a film that misses the mark so spectacularly in so many ways that the very fact that it exists boggles the mind—surely there must have been indicators as far back as the scripting phase of the production that none of it was jelling and that the whole thing needed to be overhauled or scrapped entirely. Alas, that evidently never took place and the resulting is a staggeringly intolerable work of hard-sell whimsy that, on the grand scale of Yuletide unpalatability, ranks somewhere between a rancid Snickerdoodle and a recording of Rammstein covering “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” played at the wrong speed. All I can say is that if you want to go out with the family to see a Yuletide-related film this weekend, try to find a theater showing The Best Christmas Pageant Ever instead of this garbage. If it is not playing in your area, see if Terrifier 3 is still around.