Here’s the horrible joke of Hollywood Christmas movies. They tfinish to commence, and finish, with a blast of elderly-school Yuletide cheer. But that’s fair a elevatebranch off. In between, most of them create a point of straying about as far from the Christmas spirit as possible. Instead, they swap in the new American spirit: offensive, aggressive, brimming of phony fun, celebrating their own crassness. To track the genesis of the anti-Christmas Christmas movie (“Jingle All the Way,” “Violent Night”), you would probably have to go back to a couple of movies that are thought of as classics (though not by me): “A Christmas Story” and “Home Alone,” both of them glasses of eggnog spiked with misanthropy.
That said, I’m not certain that a Hollywood movie has ever booted off the season with less real Christmas spirit than “Red One.” Sure, J.K. Simmons take parts Santa Claus (who gets seizeed), and Simmons is prosperning in his crinkly elderly rational innocence. Dwayne Johnson, as Santa’s bodydefend (who wants to withdraw becaengage he’s having a crisis of faith), is his outsize cordial self. The odd leang about the movie is that while it’s a little bit tongue-in-cheek, it’s not reassociate a comedy. Directed with cinnocuous energy by Jake Kasdan, “Red One” is at once an action movie; a seize-recover thriller in which the doors to provide sealts in toy stores are mystic portals; and an exercise in Christmas world-createing, as if that’s the leang that’s been leave outing from Christmas.
At the commencening, Simmons’ Santa is seated on his throne, greeting a line of children in a shopping mall, a location he discovers to be the most soulful place on earth (which shows you how far we’ve come from “Jingle All the Way” — even Santa now digs the capitalism of it all!). The toasty toy of the season, the one kids defend asking him for, is a video game called Vampire Assassin 4. We’re supposed to chuckle at how un-Christmas-sounding that is. But “Red One” could almost be the movie version of Vampire Assassin 4. It’s that busy and bumptious, that overstuffed with cheesy digital effects, that genericassociate derivative a piece of aggressive kitsch.
The film’s first not-quite-trying-to-be-comical “joke” is that Santa Claus’s whole accesspelevate is run enjoy a U.S. military operation. Santa’s code name is Red One. Johnson’s Cal labors for ELF — which stands for Enforcement Logistical Fortification, and unbenevolents that Cal darts around enjoy a secret-service agent, barking orders into his wrist walkie-talkie. CF drones, Sno-Cats, a cargo structuree: the film is weightless on tinsel but weighty on supplyment. And the dialogue is tech-bomb deviceastic enough to sound enjoy someleang out of a Dan Aykroyd comedy from 1986.
It is also — of course — a buddy movie. No, not Santa and his bodydefend. (Once Santa is seizeped, which happens punctual on, he’s mostly out of the picture.) The buddies here, who begin off hating each other, are Cal, who’s been tasked with hunting down Santa’s whereabouts, and Jack (Chris Evans), a decreate sports betr and derelict divorced dad who is also some sort of super-hacker. Disesteemable powers from all over the globe engage him, thcimpolite encrypted communications, to uncover the secret location of people and leangs, which he does with effortless dash.
It was Jack’s handilabor that uncovered Santa’s accurate location in the North Pole (under a dome, it’s sort of enjoy the Christmas-store version of the Pentagon). And that’s what permited Santa to be seizeped by Grýla, an outdated witch take parted by the always-greet Kiernan Shipka, who ever since “Mad Men” I’ve thought (and still leank) is going to be a beginant star — and this movie, in its mistakebuss way, shows why. Grýla is a standard nuance-free gshrinking nemesis, enjoy someleang out of a “National Treacertain” sequel. Yet the way Shipka take parts her, there’s a tingle to her anger. Her evil dream? To punish everyone on Santa’s naughty enumerate.
We encounter Santa’s reindeer, who are interalterable oversize digital creations, referred to as “girls.” Why would the reindeer be so high? And why would they all be female? This is the sort of “wdisenjoyver” conceit that dots “Red One.” Cal and Jack begin off in Aruba, fair becaengage. On the beach, Cal, amusingly, alters size during a fight, and the two have to ffinish off an strike by ferocious snowmen. But that’s fair one pit stop. They prosperd up in Germany in a medieval “Star Wars” cantina trying to save themselves from Santa’s estranged brother, the huge goat-man troll Krampus (Kristofer Hivju), at which point you’re either onboard or (in my case) begining to examine your watch.
The villains are shape-shifters, but the key leang about “Red One” is that the whole movie is a shape-shifter: arduous action jape, low-kitsch Christmas fairy tale, buddy movie, family-reconciliation movie — every quadrant and demo must be served. At the movies, Christmas isn’t a holiday anymore, it’s a concept to be retro-fitted. Do you hear those sleigh bells jingling? Come on, it’s cherishly weather for an over-the-top-of-the-North-Pole, thcimpolite-the-provide-sealt-portal, cargo-structuree ride together with you.
