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Red One starts off with the age-old premise that, as a kid, Jack O’Malley (Chris Evans – Deadpool And Wolverine) didn’t believe in Santa Claus, Father Christmas, or however the alleged carbon-based individual identifies.
30 years on, he’s a hacker as well as a tealeaf – even stealing coffee and newspapers belonging to other people, as well as to the point where he can start a fire to distract from breaking in somewhere and disabling the CCTV, making him come across more like Agent 47 from Hitman than for those who represented him in either of the two mediocre movies.
He’s also a slacker who sleeps in his bath, although somehow he still manages to find time to perfectly coiffeur his excuse for a designer beard, and laments about how he’s annoyed at himself for being a bad dad, who never has time for his son.
Meanwhile, the real Santa (JK Simmons – Juror #2), works in a shopping mall just before the big day, does 500 push ups, but in the trailer, that figure is attributed to him lifting weights. He followed that up in the trailer with “Let’s go heavy”, but here, it’s “Just warming up”, while a bit later, the “Let’s go heavy” line does get used when he lifts some weights.
Another switcheroo comes when Callum Drift (Dwayne Johnson – Black Adam), head of Santa’s ELF Security (Enforcement Logistics and Fortification) shows he can supersize a toy car into a real one, and it’s much later before Jack goes back into the shop to ask for a Wonder Woman action figure and is berated, “That’s not how it works!”, although that comes right away afterwards in the trailer.
Also, in another scene, when Jack says in confused disbelief, “That was so… disturbing”, the trailer attributes it to seeing a baddie snowman put himself back together, whereas the film uses it just after he watches Dwayne in a fight, in which he shows he can change into his own ‘Mini Me’ in terms of height, and back again, on a whim.
Filling up the cast is Lucy Liu (A Man In Full) as Zoe Harlow, the director of Xmas HQ, or whatever it’s called… okay, it’s M.O.R.A (Mythological Oversight and Restoration Authority), where they protect the mythological world, such as Bigfoot and the Headless Horseman. She rocks a trouser suit, but for the majority of her screen time, she just stands motionless and speaks with a very stiff face, making me wonder if she’s letting Botox do the talking?
But for want of a plot, Drift wants to retire because he’s lost the feel of Christmas, with more people ending up on the naughty list than ever before. When it comes to a major baddie, Gryla (Kiernan Shipka – Totally Killer, Twisters) is a 900-year-old ogre who can shapeshift, choosing here to look like a young blonde woman in her 20s, with a predilection for what looks like a pleasing bondage outfit.
As well as kidnapping Santa, she wants to kidnap all the kids who have ever been on the naughty list and imprison them forever. Maybe she’s working for the Church of England, although the script never embelished on that.
Christmas films aimed at kids really shouldn’t need to run much longer than 90 minutes, and Red One is way too long at 123! It diverts time to include Krampus (Kristofer Hivju – Cocaine Bear) as Santa’s brother, with a storyline that’s excessively tedious, and occasionally schmaltzy. Plus, it’s one of those films where every challenging situation is resolved by having a ridiculous punch-up.
In fact, it’s so bad, that when it’s getting towards the endgame, and in a scene between Jack and Drift, Jack says, “Let’s save Christmas!”, Drift makes him repeat it several times until it sounds like he means it, but as it plays out onscreen, it just sounds like they left in a load of outttakes for no benefit to anyone.
And a last plot point, this narked me at the time: When Jack and Drift go through a portal, there’s a door built in to each side, when any normal door frame only requires the one!
It’s more interesting what happened OFF-screen, rather than on, particularly with Dwayne Johnson turning up late for work so often, either 7-8 hours late or missing a number of days, that this caused the budget to spiral from $200m to $250m!
In fact, his pay-packet was that $50m! Is it really worth bringing him on board, just so he can chirp, “The North pole has been taken!” He’s taking the fucking piss!
And to that end, I understand he eventually admitted to “peeing in bottles“. WTF?! Why is this guy still hired?
Plus, despite spending a lot of money on CGI including big polar bear ELF Agent Garcia (Reinaldo Faberlle – Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.3 IMAX 3D), that character is hardly used. Adding to that is the fact that despite being Santa, JK Simmons is hardly in it!
Let’s kick a Christmas turkey while it’s down, further, since the filming for Red One concluded in February 2023, it was originally scheduled for an Amazon Prime streaming release for December 2023, but somehow was deemed worthy of the big screen.
It’s also very telling that “Footage of Red One was first shown at CinemaCon in April 2024 to journalists selected by Johnson’s publicist, but they were not allowed to write about what they saw.”, according to this.
Red One is going to flop hard, and the last thing Warner Bros (who are distributing it in some territories) need is another one, after Joker 2.
Red One is in cinemas now, but isn’t yet available to pre-order on Blu-ray or DVD. However, once announced, it will appear on the New DVD Blu-ray 3D and 4K releases UK list.
Detailed specs:
Cert: 
Running time: 123 minutes
Release date: November 6th 2024
Studio: Amazon Studios / Warner Bros
Aspect Ratio: 2.39:1 (ARRIRAW (4.5K, 4.6K), Anamorphic Panavision)
Cinema: Odeon Trafford Centre
Rating: 3/10
Director: Jake Kasdan
Producers: Dany Garcia, Hiram Garcia, Dwayne Johnson, Jake Kasdan, Melvin Mar, Chris Morgan
Screenplay: Chris Morgan
Music: Henry Jackman
Cast:
Callum Drift: Dwayne Johnson
Jack O’Malley: Chris Evans
Zoe Harlow: Lucy Liu
Nick: JK Simmons
Mrs. Claus: Bonnie Hunt
Krampus: Kristofer Hivju
Gryla: Kiernan Shipka
Olivia: Mary Elizabeth Ellis
Dylan: Wesley Kimmel
Ted: Nick Kroll
ELF Agent Garcia: Reinaldo Faberlle
Young Jack: Wyatt Hunt
Young Jack’s Cousin: Clayton Cooper
Gene: Lanz Duffy
Uncle Rick: Marc Evan Jackson
Candy Cane Thief: Pilot Bunch
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.