This review may contain spoilers!
Red One follows Callum Drift, head of Santa's secret Service (E.L.F.) as he gears towards his last ride on the sleigh. However, when Santa is kidnapped on Drift's watch he heads out on a globe-spanning mission to recover the holiday hero. But Drift will have to make an unsavoury alliance with the hacker who exposed Santa's location in order to find St. Nick. Will this decorated Christmas bodyguard and level four naughty lister be able to save Christmas?
There is something about this movie that had me laughing far more than I thought it would; there aren't a lot of big comedy players in this and it is geared up solidly like a blockbuster. However, the strength of Red One is that it never really takes itself too seriously, even better it sort of leans into the absurdity of the story and world it is portraying. Drift's stoic serious quality in the face of mythical beings, toys that come to life and attack snowmen only make the whackier elements more humourous.
The visual effects across the film justify the high budget at play too; with entire landscapes, mythical creatures and shrinking Dwayne Johnson's looking inventive and placed well in a fun romp of a blockbuster. I really commend the design team at work here, the final form for Gryla is surprisingly scary and good look for the showdown with the antagonist.
Dwayne Johnson, who played Callum Drift, works remarkably well as the straight man to a very whacky script; Johnson has a hard edge to this special Christmas operative that made me realise he works as the comedic backbone of this film. Chris Evans, who played Jack O'Malley, feels like one of the greatest actors in this ensemble; Evans takes a very smarmy criminal and steadily teaches him the meaning of Christmas over the course of this performance. Lucy Liu, who played Zoe, quite like Johnson works so well because she plays things so serious; Liu really commands a scene and feels like the leader of a globe-spanning force. J.K. Simmons, who played Nick, is a really fun casting for this gruff and tough Santa; he simultaneously embodies the spirit of Christmas while also having a bit of a world weary streak. Kiernan Shipka, who played Gryla, commands the screen as a pretty major lead antagonist role; it's really great to see Shipka own and lead a role alongside this major cast.
However, the best performance came from Kristofer Hivju, who played Krampus. A heavy amount of prosthetics and Hivju disappears into one of his most memorable roles I've watched onscreen. His take on Krampus is a cruel captor, a beast built out of the need to punish the naughty children on the list. Yet despite that I loved how raucous and boisterous this character was, he felt like the head of a very bizarre party. His immediate match-off with Johnson was very tense, and you actually felt he was a pretty intimidating force against the lead. I felt Hivju really inhabited his character to draw comedic moments out quite naturally. More than that, I found the way he brought a feeling of regret and connection to his relationship with on-screen brother, Simmons, to be a nice emotional touch.
Red One is pretty funny throughout but that doesn't really disguise the fact the plot has nothing to it really. This film is a Christmas action caper, with scenes of the American Air Force escorting Santa out of their borders, strict work structures for Santa's workshop and a hacker who accidentally ruins Christmas. The whole action narrative with a high stakes kidnapping is a bit thin, and the twist being Santa is still in the North Pole all along feels like a pretty deflated end to the whole adventure. The worldbuilding is extremely over the top and nonsensical with a whole SHIELD-like organisation romping around wrangling mythical creatures and Gryla with a very two-dimensional fixation on punishing all naughty people. Tie this very thin main narrative to an E.L.F. looking to hit retirement because he's lost the joy of Christmas and it becomes a bit too corny as well. The whole fluffy Christmas narrative is smushed against a film that wants to be seen as an action-comedy blockbuster and the whole thing doesn't pair together neatly. I also really couldn't stand Jack's absentee Dad storyline, discovering the joy of fatherhood again whilst also being a high profile fugitive felt like two very different subplots once again awkwardly entangled.
The way this film is shot pivots on the effects, holding us in the confines of a massive blue-screened or Volume set. Nothing in how this thing is captured shows much room for a unique style or artisitic voice. I expected a lot more from Henry Jackman's score; what we get is the most generic Christmas sound ever paired with a film that could've used a bit of flavour or for classic tracks to at the least be used comedically. Even the soundtrack is overloaded with more Mariah Carey than anything else.
Bonnie Hunt, who played Mrs Claus, is quite a timid and light performance; Hunt often fades into the background and doesn't impact the plot much. Mary Elizabeth Ellis, who played Olivia, is a tough pick to play off Evans as his ex-partner; the pair have no screen chemistry that even speaks to a history. Wesley Kimmel, who played Dylan, is perhaps the most annoying role of the film; watching him and Evans struggle through father and son scenes together resulted in the weak point of the feature. Nick Kroll, who played Ted, leans into the safe elements of his comedy acting a bit too much; by which I mean Kroll is here to make silly faces and sillier voices.
This film can be silly fun at times and boasts a solid cast, but it can't escape Dwayne Johnson's streak of lousy blockbusters. I would give Red One a 5.5/10.