RED ONE -- More Like Red One Star

Review by Adam Donato

Curious how streaming sites decide when to let their movies be released in theaters and for how long. Any normal person would think that a big, action blockbuster starring Captain America, the yellow peanut M&M, and The Rock might attract people to come out to the theater. Of course these streaming sites don’t want to support the box office as they want to kill the theater industry and move movies to streaming. Short term payday or long term culture shift? Today, Amazon chose a wide theatrical release. 

Jake Kasdan has directed many comedy films, but Red One feels most akin to the Jumanji reboot duology. That franchise also stars The Rock and is a bad mouth, but family friendly, fantasy, action, adventure romp. Those movies were a big hit at the box office, but this time the franchise recognition is Santa Clause and The Rock’s reputation isn’t the same as it was five years ago. Speaking of five years ago, that’s the last time Chris Evans played Captain America. He’s collected a few streaming flops in that time in Ghosted, The Fall Guy, and Pain Hustlers. The marketing for Red One is pretty substantial for an original film like this. Seems like a pretty big gamble. 

There’s plenty of good ingredients here, but this movie is just corporate garbage. Evans and The Rock have zero chemistry together and the majority of the movie is just the two of them together. The constant lame one liners from Evans are cringe inducing and make him entirely unlikable. The Rock is the same old serious The Rock action man. Both of these guys are really good actors that have had success in the past and have the potential to succeed again, but Red One is no success.

It’s funny thinking of Santa Clause as a franchise. Can’t make a blockbuster without some sort of name brand recognition. It is interesting to see the different takes on Santa in movies. This corporate ripped Santa and CIA esq crew are not a crazy new take. It’s reminiscent of Arthur Christmas, especially in its corporate aspect. The entire joke of J.K. Simmons’s Santa is that he’s ripped, but it’s funny because Santa is usually fat because he eats all the cookies. The elves are little CGI freaks. The trolls are big CGI freaks. One of the main supporting characters is a CGI polar bear named Garcia, who happens to be the only memorable character. Just seeing this corporate/special ops take on Santa coming from Amazon was sad.

The CGI in the film was disgusting. Again, outside of Garcia the polar bear. All the CGI characters had such ugly designs and were very unconvincing. There’s a scene where The Rock slides down a giant outdoor slide. Horrible. One of the recurring bits in the movie was that some characters would have the ability to shrink to about half their size in an instant like Ant-Man. This looks bad every time. That being said, there are some makeup and practical effects that look cool in this movie,  this is especially true for Krampus and his horde of goons. It was reminiscent of the Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. A movie that’s quite similar in tone to Red One, but much, much better quality. 

The humor in the film is lazy. It’s littered with baseline “person getting hit or falling down” jokes. Red One is rated PG-13 and thinks mild cursing is a good punchline. They don’t even actually go for it. PG-13 allows one f bomb and they cut away from it. Either say the word or don’t. They want to appeal to the same type of kids that would go to a Marvel movie. This is really sad because Jake Kasdan has a very good track record of comedies. The film just feels passionless and artificial. 

When the people asked for original movies, this is not what they meant. Maybe paying Dwayne The Rock Johnson $50 million in 2024 wasn’t a good value contract. He cannot wait until Moana 2 revives him. Unluckily for Red One, Moana 2 is only a couple weeks away. Next week is only Gladiator 2 and Wicked. If Amazon would’ve kept this on streaming, nobody would’ve noticed this bellyflop. The masses may mildly enjoy this, but it’s not sneaking into the annual Christmas movie rotation. 

Red One is in theaters everywhere on November 15.

Rating: 1/5