I’ll admit, I was late to my screening of “Red One.” I thought I could grab a quick cup of coffee before the film, but the barista took forever. By the time I got to the theater, I was greeted with one of the dumbest opening sequences in a film I had ever seen. Although I was late, I was wondering if my barista had given me a blessing in disguise by preventing me from seeing any more of this disastrous movie. Whatever I missed, I’m glad I did.
“Red One” follows Cal Drift, the Head of Security at the North Pole, partnering with the criminal tracker and “Level 4 Naughty-Lister,” Jack O’Malley, to rescue Santa Claus after being kidnapped by an evil, mysterious force.
Perhaps the worst part of this whole film is that it’s not even fun. Even with my caffeinated mind, I struggled to stay awake throughout its underutilized 123-minute runtime. It fails to even be a “so-bad-it’s-good” movie. It’s just so bad, it’s bad.
For being marketed and presented like a big-budget Hollywood action flick, “Red One” certainly seems to lack excitement. As stupid as the trailers were, they promised at least a brain-dead fun time. Sadly, this action flick doesn’t even have much action, and when it does, it’s lazily made with dull fight choreography and CGI setpieces. There is so much CGI in “Red One,” digitally animated models of the actors are utilized for practically half of all the film’s action sequences.
Funnily enough, for a movie with a $250 million budget, “Red One” looks terrible. Despite the film being predominantly computer-generated, many of its spectacles look uncanny and awkward. One character is a giant, talking polar bear entirely generated digitally, but is as awkwardly placed into the shot as a fan self-inserting their original character into their favorite story. Additionally, the digital CG replacements for the actors when it came to the more intense stunts looked about as real as a video game cutscene from the 2000s. They couldn’t have spent at least a few of those millions of dollars trying to make the movie look good?
The North Pole is colorless and reminiscent of the dystopian setting of “1984.” Suppose you want to entertain your audience mostly consisting of children. In that case, I don’t think making the mystic HQ of Christmas look like a mundane interpretation of the Industrial Revolution is a good idea. I don’t care if it was intentional or not, it still looks bad.
No one deserves a big lump of coal than Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. He plays Cal, the main macho action star of the movie, but the problem is that he’s just too uninteresting. For too much of the film, we are forced to stare at him playing another variant of himself. I was forced to see so much Johnson I began to suffer from eye fatigue. He has proved himself to be the laziest star in Hollywood today, as he couldn’t bother to show any range in performance for his life. The film is trying so hard to establish Johnson as a major on-screen tour de force but fails terribly. With him also serving as a producer on “Red One,” I wonder if this largely influenced the biased shot selection.
Since he departed from the WWE and increased his involvement in Hollywood, Johnson has continuously sought to establish himself as a cinematic superstar. But the issue he fails to realize is this: while his exaggerated persona worked in the world of “professional wrestling,” film is an entirely different medium. Johnson struggles to maintain any natural screen presence simply because he lacks a charismatic personality. Despite how much of a respected figure he used to be, “Red One” hits the final nail in the coffin for any respect Johnson can ever have in American pop culture.
I respect Chris Evans’ departure from the all-American goody-two-shoes identity audiences recognize him following his performance as Captain America. Playing the unethical criminal tracker and absent father Jack, Evans at least demonstrates the range he has as an actor, but he truly needs to pick out better roles. Evans had fun embracing the exaggerated scumbag person of his character, which I found surprisingly enjoyable to watch. But it by no means redeems the disaster that is this movie.
What Evans is forced to work with holds him back. Between an egomaniacal “superstar,” digital effect stand-ins, forced witty one-liners for most of his dialogue, he still does not deserve any praise for his involvement in the film. With critical flops like “The Gray Man,” “Ghosted,” and now this in his filmography, at this rate, the average moviegoer may never see him as anything more than his previous role as “Captain America.”
Being a holiday movie, the film attempts to have heartfelt moments promoting traditional Christmas values, however, it’s difficult to produce anything meaningful when your movie is so soulless. The whole thing feels too corporate–like a product so out of touch with reality, it doesn’t seem to know or understand what the audience is looking for. Honestly, I’m not even sure what I wanted from it anymore. It just feels so alienating watching such a disconnected and out-of-touch movie, especially with a theme as widely celebrated as Christmas.
The film also recycles the same exhausted messages from past Christmas flicks and adds nothing to it. If anything, it says less than what the classics have to offer. Want a sweet holiday movie expressing the importance of family and celebrating the Christmas spirit? Just watch “Home Alone.” At least that film has cooler action sequences than this mess.
After watching this movie, it feels like “Red One” killed my childhood, taxidermied it, and gave it back to me as a present. Frankly, I don’t want it, and if this is what the holiday has come to, then put me on the naughty list, too.
1/5
