The Christmastime action-adventure family fantasy comedy Red One is as overstuffed as a holiday turkey. Much of it whooshes by in a blur of CGI effects that can leave you feeling dizzy. But it’s not all bad, even if it feels more like a joke movie within another movie than it does an actual movie.

 

Dwayne Johnson, whose movie career to this point has mostly consisted of him playing himself, gives one of his more credible performances as Callum Drift, head of security detail for Santa Claus himself, played by J. K. Simmons. Callum is hanging up his hat after more than 500 years on the job because he’s finding it hard to believe in the spirit of Christmas anymore; his Naughty List has gotten too long, and all the negativity in the world has beaten him down.

 

Callum springs into action when Santa Claus is kidnapped, and he teams up with Jack O’Malley (Chris Evans), a hacker who can help track the big guy. This leads Callum and Jack on a journey through various Christmas myths, including a visit to Santa’s brother Krampus (Kristofer Hivju) and his annual Christmas slap-off, as they fight to take down the Christmas witch, Grýla (Kiernan Shipka), and save the holiday for the entire world.

Red One, which is directed by Jake Kasdan (who did two Jumanji movies with Johnson), feels like it was assembled by committee at a huge group meeting where everyone was encouraged to share whatever was on their minds after being told “there are no bad ideas.” And that it has the inconsequential feel of a streaming movie, even though it’s debuting in theaters, is a distressing sign of the way the two worlds have been mashed together.

Both Johnson and Evans, who have a hilarious lack of on-screen chemistry together, have contributed their share to the discard pile of streaming misfires — Johnson with the wretched Red Notice, Evans with The Gray Man and Ghosted — Red One feels a lot like another one of those.

 

As it stands, Red One is an overly busy Christmas story that works overtime to cram in as much mythology and worldbuilding as it can. If it would just settle down for a few minutes, it might identify its spirit, but it’s too busy trying to be all things to all people to just be its own thing.

 

4/10

Boluwatife Adesina
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Boluwatife Adesina is a media writer and the helmer of the Downtown Review page. He’s probably in a cinema near you.