Red One (2024) – Film Review

Director: Jake Kasdan
Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Chris Evans, JK Simmons
Certificate:

By Roger Crow

Depending on your age, this megabucks fantasy epic is either the greatest Christmas movie ever made… or an acquired taste. Given the fact it cost a reported $350million, no doubt a chunk of which went to star/producer Dwayne Johnson, financially it would have to be box office dynamite to recoup its production budget, especially as it has jumped to streaming a few weeks after a big-screen release.

Thankfully it has a pretty solid cast. Johnson dials down the cocky, bulletproof hero routine to play Callum Drift, a jaded, often sombre sidekick to Santa Claus (JK Simmons). When ‘Nick’ is kidnapped, no prizes for guessing who has to track him down. But as this is a buddy movie, Drift calls on the help of Chris Evans’ rogue hero, Jack O’Malley, who, naturally thinks the Santa Claus legend is the stuff of fairy tales.

Director Jake Kasdan did such a great job of crafting often touching fantasy epics like the Jumanji reboots that it’s a shame this is so top heavy with effects and action set pieces. Most of the money is up there on screen, and no doubt hundreds of digital effects artists were thrilled to wade through the credits and find their names.

“Nice ideas”

But Christmas action comedies can be a mixed bag of tricks, and at times this isn’t as funny as Lee Majors’ glorified cameo at the start of Scrooged, which seems to have been a key inspiration. Johnson and Evans are a good double act, though the big/small effects wear thin after a couple of minutes, and though a nice idea, turning toy cars into fully working vehicles is also a tiresome spot of product placement for the toy brand and whichever full-size, real-world version it turns into.

At 123 minutes, it’s 20 minutes too long, and some of the language will be a little too extreme for little kids, but it passes the time.

Given the fact Red One has taken a global haul of under $175million after 30 days, this could be one of the biggest flops of the year, either because Johnson fans knew it was coming to streaming so stayed away from multiplexes, or just because The Rock star may have had his day with the TikTok generation.

It’s good, not great, and despite some nice ideas, a wisecracking Johnson (who does pull off a couple of great deadpan lines) would have been far preferable to the occasional grinch on display here.