‘Red One’ Tries to Supersize the Christmas Movie

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.

The for-hire hacker, Jack O’Malley (Evans) is a deadbeat dad to his son (Wesley Kimmel), and, we’re informed, a “level-four naughty-lister.” Evans might be most famous for his Captain America, but smarmy smart-aleck (like in Knives Out) is really his wheelhouse. And he gives Red One some comic energy as it transitions into a sort of buddy comedy with him and Johnson.

But Red One keeps overdoing it. As they race to rescue Santa before Christmas Eve, the hunt brings in the villainous Christmas Witch, Gryla (Kiernan Shipka) and Krampus (Kristofer Hivju), here defined as Santa’s brother. The sensation, with these characters and others, is of stuffing too much into an already gaudy stocking, and yet somehow forgetting to add any charm.

Red One comes off a little like the holiday version of Cowboys and Aliens — enough so to make you nostalgic for leaner tales about folkloric figures starring Johnson, like The Tooth Fairy. But if we’re to have every possible brand of Christmas movie, it seems a shame that when the phrase “The North Pole has been taken!” Gerard Butler is nowhere to be seen.

‘Red One’ is released nationwide on Nov. 15, 2024.