The latest action-comedy from Dwayne Johnson and Jake Kasdan brings very little to the table but leftover scraps.
Santa movies are really movies about faith. That doesn’t necessarily mean faith in God, though sometimes movies will slot Santa in as a replacement for the divine. On a larger level though, they are movies about the ability to believe in something unseen, the magic of kindness and charity. Santa is often a stand-in for the very idea that good things can happen, despite how crusty this world can seem.
To be charitable, Red One does have one interesting thought on its mind: why would Santa have faith in us? Early in the film, Dwayne Johnson’s Callum Drift, the head security for the real Santa Claus (JK Simmons), submits his resignation and expresses his own doubts about the whole gift-giving operation. After all, for the first time in history, more people are on the naughty list than the nice list. It is hard to not see this point reflected in the shadow of the past week. Callum admits that he is jaded about the inherent goodness in people, which makes his ability to work for the jolly embodiment of Christmas cheer increasingly impossible.
To be less charitable, this is maybe the only unique thing to pull out of Red One, a deeply unoriginal movie that constantly feels like a cheap knock off of not just one but several other more ambitious films. From Men in Black to Ant Man, the movie constantly can’t help but remind you of the kind of lighthearted fun it is trying to be in better forms. Add on the deadweight of being a Dwayne Johnson vehicle, itself a known quantity at this point, and it’s a film that has flashes of being an enjoyable if disposable piece of entertainment that is weighed down by the constant nagging feeling you have heard this song before.
The film centers around the two-hander of Dwayne Johnson’s jaded Cal, and his unwitting partner Jack O’Malley (Chris Evans, trying his best), a hacker who unwittingly led to the kidnapping of Santa Claus two days before Christmas Eve. Jack is dragged into the world of MORA (the Mythological Oversight and Restoration Authority), a secret organization responsible protecting the world from supernatural forces. If Callum’s ELF (Enforcement Logistics and Fortification, in one of the lazier backronyms in recent memory) is part of MORA or merely a cooperative organization is unclear. In fact, a lot of the world building in Red One is fairly cast off, giving rudimentary explanations that it then rushes past to get to the action.
The problem is most of that action fluctuates between boring and unintelligible. For a family friendlyish (the film is PG-13, but mostly for some tough guy language) action-comedy, it is a bummer that the action is the weakest link for the movie, and the comedy is not far behind. Also Johnson and Evans chemistry is non-existent, and other than JK Simmons as Santa and Kristofer Hivju as Krampus (here imagined as Santa’s estranged brother), most of the extended cast feels very “here-for-the-paycheck.” Lucy Liu as the head of MORA is especially egregious, especially when compared to comparable performances like Rip Torn in Men In Black.
It isn’t like those involved aren’t capable of better work. Director Jake Kasdan has made good material before, in this genre, with this lead actor in Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle. But the goalposts for what they seek to make this time around seem lower, potentially due to a lack of commitment from the star-producer or a belief that their high concept is so clearly broad appeal they don’t have to try as hard.
For all these reasons, it is hard to not see Red One as a deeply cynical movie. It provides an ersatz stab at several earlier, more successful films, but also tries to pull at the central idea of “you believe in the goodness of people, right?” It has little regard for the intelligence, emotional or otherwise, of its audience. By providing shallow, shrugging For being a Santa movie, the end result is a fairly hollow, faithless endeavor.
