How grim have things become when an uncomplicated yarn about the core principles of Christmas—warmth, charity, and cookies for all—can’t hit multiplexes without the digital rock-em/sock-em oomph of a superhero movie? Strip away its tinsel-and-ribbons finery, festooned with tongue firmly in cheek by director Jake Kasdan (Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, its 2019 sequel, and, long ago, Zero Effect), and suddenly Red One isn’t fit to be a holiday perennial; it’s too hellbent on blockbusting to spread any enduring goodwill. Here’s a Christmastime caper attempting to be so many things in the name of broad appeal that it ends up being rotten at all of them—a White House kidnap thriller, a midstream Marvel movie, and an inoffensive holiday trifle armored by the most dismissive of yuletide messages: It’s fine to be naughty, as long as you’re nice about it. How novel.
Spike your eggnog, and you can almost see how the movie’s disparate parts fit together. The North Pole, home to Santa Claus’s (J.K. Simmons) global merry-making concern, is now a teeming metropolis hidden from mortal eyes by a force field that could have been conjured in Wakanda. Santa’s looking positively yolked these days, too, with a physique that suggests all those cookies he’s housing are actually protein bars. He bellows like Thor and hurtles through the sky on a racecar sled powered by an armada of digital reindeer adorned with glow-in-the-dark antlers. Despite his awesomeness, St. Nick has a bodyguard, the even more jacked (and dubiously monikered) elf—er, E.L.F. agent—Callum Drift (Dwayne Johnson), who, after centuries of duty, has announced his retirement. And on Christmas Eve, of all days! Doesn’t he know how these movies work? Hasn’t he seen In the Line of Fire?
See, Callum no longer believes in Santa’s mission due to the growing trend of “naughty listers” (20% growth annually, which, given the grim behavior in theatres these days, totally tracks). So the movie responds, as Christmas movies so often do, by challenging his lack of faith in people: the disgruntled ogress Grýla (Kiernan Shipka), flanked by a complement of paramilitary snowmen, kidnaps Santa and uses his magic to turn Christmas into a culling of those she deems “naughty.” (Like most belligerent supervillains, her reasonings are vague.) Santa, or “Red One,” as he’s known to the E.L.F. (Enforcement Logistics and Fortification) and the Lucy Liu-led M.O.R.A. (Mythological Oversight and Restoration Authority), must be rescued. This requires Callum to team up with salty computer hacker Jack O’Malley (Chris Evans), a “Level 4 Naughty Lister” and, per Liu, “probably the best tracker in the world.” Guess what: He’s disenchanted by Christmas, too.
After years of playing Captain America, the human embodiment of hopes and dreams, Evans’ presence in Red One seems calibrated to subvert expectations. Given how empty and predictable most of this movie is, I welcomed that calibration. With action sequences popping up every 15 minutes (theoretically, it keeps small children from squirming in their seats), the actor spends a lot of time getting tossed around by baddies instead of trouncing them. He drinks, gambles, is a bad dad to his son (Wesley Kimmel), and steals candy from a baby just to give moviegoers too busy fidgeting with their snacks a chance to keep up. Evans even broadens his native Bostonian accent to add street-level spice to the character. In a better movie, he’d contrast with Johnson like a holly jolly Lethal Weapon. Instead, these two are just two sides of the same Grinchy coin: One frowns as he cracks wise, the other just frowns. “I know I’m not going to like you,” Jack tells Callum early on. That’s where any subversion, calibrated or otherwise, ends. After all, what are the odds that these two won’t be best friends before the end of the movie?
It’s no surprise that Red One spends its middle chunk wandering around; it knows where it’s going just as much as we do, but it has a stupefying $250 million budget to burn. (I sure hope Bonnie Hunt got a nice paycheck because the Mrs. Claus role does her no favors.) So Callum and Jack traipse across the globe in their quest for Santa via interdimensional portals hidden in toy store storage rooms (where else?). One of the movie’s better recurring jokes has Callum snatching toys from the shelves (I guess the North Pole keeps some sort of tab) and embiggening them with a wrist-mounted doohicky that turns Hot Wheels into getaway vehicles and, one presumes, Wonder Woman action figures into Amazonian comrades-in-arms. (Maybe in the sequel.) He took a Monopoly board, too, but that scene was removed from the final cut. Anyway, Callum’s gadget comes in handy during an extended sequence in the lair of Krampus (Kristofer Hivju), where Callum enters into a ritualistic slapfight with the mythic creature. Krampus is good fun. Maybe he should have been Evans’s partner.
You’d think that all this unabashed squishiness—the pat sentimentality, its pre-vizzed action mayhem, and Evans’s affected glibness—would insulate the movie from critical Scrooges like me. As we filed out of the theatre, I noticed quite a few people at my screening seemed amused by Red One‘s chaos. I don’t blame them; the holidays can be hard on families, and the fact that Amazon/MGM moved Red One from its initial plans for a streaming launch to theatrical release will likely serve as a sugary diversion in between dire shopping excursions and tricky dinner conversations. If only Red One had a bit more respect for its audience. We can all use a reaffirming message this holiday season, but this stuffs stockings with little more than hot air. I’d have preferred some coal. There’s at least a use for that.
Director: Jake Kasdan Writer: Chris Morgan Stars: Dwayne Johnson, Chris Evans, Lucy Liu, J.K. Simmons, Kiernan Shipka, Bonnie Hunt, and Kristofer Hivju. Release date: November 6, 2024 (United Kingdom); November 15, 2024 (United States)
Jarrod Jones is a freelance critic based in Chicago, with bylines at The A.V. Club, IGN, Polygon, and any place that will take him, really. For more of his mindless thoughts on genre trash, cartoons, and comic books, follow him on Twitter (@jarrodjones_) or check out his blog, DoomRocket.
