'Red One' Kicks Off the Holiday Movie Season
by EG
Moviegoers will get a Christmas film featuring Dwayne Johnson, Chris Evans, tons of CGI, and military overtones this week whether they want it or not. Red One will charge into theaters and attempt to take over the box-office race. It will be a tough battle, given that the movie is getting universally negative reviews, but theater-goers will have few other choices in the quiet part of the Hollywood holiday season. Read on for details.
Via the Associated Press.
Ah, the Christmas movie. That old chestnut. That cozy perennial pastime where — let’s just pick one scene from “Red One” — Dwayne Johnson, playing Santa’s body guard, faces off with a witch-possessed mercenary (Nick Kroll) and ice-sword-wielding CGI snowmen on the sandy beaches of Aruba. Can’t you just taste the eggnog?
Such are the ugly-sweater clashes of “Red One,” a big-budget gambit to supersize the Christmas movie. Countless movies before have wrestled with who Santa is. Does he really exist? But “Red One” is the first one to answer doubters with a superhero-like St. Nick who runs his North Pole operation like the army, who bench presses and counts carbs and who, given that he’s played by J.K. Simmons, looks like he could teach one heck of a jazz class.
There is ample time during “Red One,” which opens in theaters Thursday, to ponder who, exactly, put a Marvel-ized Santa on their wish list. The movie, directed by the “Jumanji” reboot filmmaker Jake Kasdan and scripted by the veteran “Fast & Furious” screenwriter Chris Morgan, was conceived by producer Hiram Garcia as the start of a holiday franchise for Amazon MGM Studios — presumably to satisfy those who have pined for a Christmas movie but with, you, know, more military industrial complex.
“Red One,” which is brightened by its other A-list star, Chris Evans, is a little self-aware about its own inherent silliness. But not nearly enough. There is a better, funnier movie underneath all the CGI gloss. But overwhelmed by effects and overelaborate world building (there are trolls, ogres and a headless horsemen here, all loosely connected as mythical creatures), “Red One” feels like an unwanted high-priced Christmas present.
So announces Callum Drift (Johnson), a long-serving security operative for Santa. He’s not an elf but a member of ELF, Enforcement Logistics and Fortification. (Don’t you just feel the holiday cheer welling up inside?) But after years, even centuries on the job, Callum’s faith in Christmas traditions is waning. For the first time, those on the naughty list outnumber the nice. On a mall visit two days before Christmas, he looks despondently at adults bickering over presents, if not outright stealing them.
Callum and other operatives with earpieces shuttle Santa (“Red One” in their secret service-styled lingo) in a fleet of Suburbans to his sleigh, which, while pulled by reindeer, moves more like a spaceship. Back at the North Pole — picture a sort of wintery Abu Dhabi — Santa is kidnapped. The culprits leave only spilt milk behind. The ensuing hunt, overseen by the chief of a special ops group protecting mystical beings (Lucy Liu), leads immediately to a hacker who helped an anonymous client geolocate Santa.
Get the rest of the story at the Associated Press.