Frequent Dwayne The Rock Johnson collaborator Jake Kasdan is back with a new Christmas film. Red One follows a smarmy Chris Evans as Jack O’Malley. A level four naughty lister who begins the movie by literally stealing candy from a baby. Jack gets in over his head selling off the location of Santa Clause to the highest bidder and is forced to team up with Santa’s security detail, the E.L.F., to bring him back in time for Christmas.

Red One is a silly family-friendly comedy action movie. Jake Kasdan, who has seen success with the Jumanji series, delivers a film with a few good jokes, the tiniest bit of heart, and a ton of CGI. The movie aims to be a Christmas classic but instead falls short of living up to the high pedigree of its peers.

Christmas Impossible

Red One tries its best to fit a Christmas movie into a buddy cop action movie premise. This version of Santa is a jacked J.K Simmons and his security detail is the North Poles version of any generic special forces team. Instead of grizzled veterans and tech nerds this team has giant CGI polar bears and The Rock with a magic wrist wand. It’s all very silly but the perfect kind of fodder for a Christmas action flick.

Dwayne Johnson plays Callum Drift, Santa’s head of security who is one day away from retirement. Callum has lost his Christmas spirit and is fed up with the commercialism and adult antics surrounding Christmas. He plans to do one last Christmas Eve ride with his buddy Nick until the big man goes missing. Cal then teams up with O’Malley in a race to retrieve Santa before it’s too late.

Buddy Christmas Caper

The best part of Red One is the team up between Evans and Johnson. Both actors are bankable action stars and they have great on screen chemistry. The Rock is playing the straight man and Evans is playing a goofy ne’er-do-well. Red One’s biggest problem however is how long it takes these two to get together. We’re here to see Captain America and The Rock save Santa Clause and it takes almost forty-five minutes before the two even meet.

The beginning of the film really drags with few jokes landing and very little action. We see Evans pull off a slick Rube Goldberg-type heist in the most boring way possible. And the scenes with The Rock and J.K. Simmons as Santa are totally devoid of humor or fun. For a buddy cop movie Simmons should be the grumpy old Police captain but instead, he’s just jolly St Nick with a 6-pack. Their chemistry really suffers in the first act and makes the entire opening feel like an extended set-dressing sequence showing us Red One’s North Pole.

Holiday Heist

Once Evans and Johnson do get together the film starts to take shape and we get to see a bit of the two’s comedic chops start to shine through. Red One is essentially a buddy cop movie and these two do a fine enough job carrying that premise. The duo encounters abominable snowmen, winter demon Krampus, and evil snow globes. All of the set pieces from a sunny beach to a winter hideout for a demon look great, but the action in the film always results in little more than CGI slugfests.

I suppose that’s to be expected in a film from Kasdan and a Christmas action flick but it gets boring quick. The film sets up cool ideas with The Rocks magic wrist wand but it’s used to essentially give him Ant-Man powers and turn hot wheels cars into real ones. It looks good enough visually but a few practical fight scenes could have helped the overall action.

The True Meaning of Christmas

Like every good Christmas movie, Red One has a deeper theme at play. The theme this time is becoming a better man. Evans as O’Malley is a selfish life-long naughty lister who slowly begins to become a little bit nicer. It’s a classic holiday trope, one we’ve seen in It’s a Wonderful Life to Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol. But it’s done here with little emphasis on the change and O’Malley’s relationship with his son feels shoehorned in as an afterthought.

Maybe I’m asking too much for a movie from the Jumanji guy but Red One feels pretty devoid of heart. O’Malley’s inevitable change is not only telegraphed but feels entirely unearned. One moment he’s stealing gold from Krampus and literally five minutes later he’s putting his life on the line for Callum. There’s no grounded arc, just a manufactured one that has to come because it’s a Christmas movie.

Classic Christmas Films

Red One will almost certainly avoid becoming a family Christmas tradition. The best Christmas movies are the ones that fully realize their deeper themes. Not just add them in because it’s Christmas time. Movies like Home Alone, Elf, and even 2022’s Spirited have lasting potential because of their themes. We empathize with the hero despite their flaws. We’re given realistic plot choices that propel their change and it feels earned when the turn comes.

Red One makes these themes secondary to CGI action set pieces and quippy one liners. Some jokes land and some fights look cool but it’s little more than Holiday glitz. There is some fun to be had but in the end, it all rings hollow and falls flat. For a film that laments losing the real meaning of Christmas, Red One forgets what makes a great Christmas movie.