‘Red One’ Review: Dwayne Johnson and Chris Evan’s Expensive Christmas Action Comedy Could Have Been Worse

The most important thing I can tell you about Jake Kasdan’s “Red One” is that yes, it’s a real film starring Dwayne Johnson and Chris Evans as a mismatched action movie odd couple rescuing a kidnapped Santa Claus, and not a “Saturday Night Live” parody. And it’s not nearly as awful as it sounds.

The film, which cost nearly $250 million to make, is an effectively constructed high-concept action-fantasy-comedy that waffles inconsistently between entertainingly imaginative and merely perfunctory. The world it builds — out of mythological creatures struggling to find their purpose in a world that no longer knows or cares they exist — is fun to think about, and rife with possibilities. But it explores that world using passé genre archetypes that rob the story and characters of their magic. It all averages out to slightly above average.

For a film like “Red One” that’s about as good as anyone could hope for.

“Red One” stars Johnson as Callum Drift, the head of security at the North Pole. His boss, Santa Claus (J.K. Simmons), is a lot like the President of the United States. He’s got one of the most important jobs in the world but he still makes time to glad-hand with the people, appearing at malls and asking kids what they want for Christmas. Callum has been protecting Santa Claus for hundreds of years and he’s started to lose his faith in humanity. The kids are great. The adults are just so darned naughty.

Then there’s a perimeter breach at the North Pole two days before Christmas — this is a real movie, I swear — and Santa Claus is kidnapped by commandos. So Callum and Zoe Harlow (Lucy Liu), who runs the international agency that regulates magical creatures, enlist the help of career criminal Jack O’Malley, aka “The Wolf,” to track down Kris Kringle. (No, Jack doesn’t turn out to be the Big Bad Wolf. That would’ve been too clever, and also too much like Bill Willingham’s “Fables.” This movie is already skirting that line as it is.)

Jack doesn’t believe in Santa Claus. He’s a jaded deadbeat dad who has been on the Naughty List for decades. So he spends a lot of the film gazing at magical stuff in disbelief, looking impressed so the audience doesn’t have to, which is awfully nice of him. Jack is supposed to help Callum find Santa Claus and navigate the criminal underworld, since that’s not usually an elf’s forté, but most of the time Callum is doing all the heavy lifting, beating up killer snowmen and explaining the rules of this secret supernatural world.

It’s a two-hander of a movie, so a lot of its success depends on the chemistry between Dwayne Johnson and Chris Evans. They’re fine. Not at all dislikable. Not very interesting either. They can both be charming performers and they’re both giving it about 80%. It’s hard to do much better when most of their dialogue is exposition, most of their scenes are just fetch quests, and most of their direction was “more eye rolls.” Jack has a subplot about his estranged son that actually goes somewhere, and his journey from naughty to nice helps Callum remember the true spirit of Christmas. That’s functional storytelling, even if it’s not very inspired.

“Red One” was written by Chris Morgan, the writer responsible for a lot of the “Fast and Furious” movies. Jake Kasdan, reteaming with Johnson after two enjoyable “Jumanji” sequels, doesn’t let this new comedy-adventure fly off the rails like the “Fast” flicks. That’s actually for the best, since the more “Red One” tries to convince you that it’s badass, the less convincing it is. It’s got high speed chases and monster fights but it’s still a buddy comedy about saving Santa Claus. It’s already on the precipice of total nonsense and even the slightest nudge could cause a disastrous cinematic landslide.

The villain is played by Kiernan Shipka, and her place in the mythological pantheon is kept secret for half the movie. She’s having a ton of fun ordering supernatural goons around and making speeches about vengeance and whatnot. She emerges from this film unscathed. But the film’s MVP is J.K. Simmons, which you can say about a lot of movies. His take on Santa is gregarious but somewhat grounded, making him plausible as a fairy tale figure and as a boss. Simmons got completely ripped in recent years and “Red One” knows how to make the most of his physique. One of the film’s cleverest ideas is that Santa eats all those cookies because he burns millions of calories in one night, and to be fair, that makes about as much sense as any other explanation any movie has ever come up with.

There’s a trick many press screenings like to pull where they fill the theaters with the target audience, so that critics can see how much they liked it, even if our own hearts have permanently atrophied. I call it “The Finding Neverland Effect,” since that’s exactly what J.M. Barrie did to get critics to wrap their heads around “Peter Pan” in that Oscar-winning biopic. Funnily enough it backfired this time, since I sat next to a teenager who couldn’t look more bored if he was in calculus class on the weekend. They spent most of the movie sneaking glances at their phone. So if “Red One” was made to appeal to young people it is entirely possible that they blew it.

The thing is, setting my atrophied heart aside for a second (clunk), I actually kind of like it. It’s a reasonably entertaining three-star blockbuster with some fun ideas, a game cast, and a brisk storytelling style that never runs out of steam. I was never especially impressed, but I was just enjoying the fact that they somehow turned this absurd elevator pitch into a functional, breezy, slightly above average action-comedy.

“Red One” might not save Christmas but at least it saves face.

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