Red One (2024)
Missing cosmic force of hope and holiday cheer.
Although if I had to list my favorite spirits Christmas wouldn’t be the most fitting one for me, I feel like it’s getting close enough that I can pop a winter movie here or there and snot suffer too much. I mean, some of them are actually really good movies even if you didn’t like the holiday itself - and then some of them are cookie cutter flicks that you can’t tell apart, as with anything else in cinema really right? Well then, here’s one of Amazon’s newest pitches for the week - one that I was suprised to see streaming on Prime without me needing to do any rental or purchase option, as I had thought it was still in theaters or just got to be in theaters - sometimes I love it when there’s options! Anyways, like the gift of letting me watch a movie from home, let’s unwrap this present and mystery as to whose stealing Santa for Christmas in Red One.
Yeah, good ole yuletide getting modernized once again. You’ll hear a lot more Red One than you will Saint Nic or Santa in this bad boy, complete with elf being an acronym for his body guard forces - but that’s a whole different thing. One of the ELF’s is retiring after this run, as he’s beginning to get a bit delusion-ed with how all the adults are acting and finding it hard to find the cheerful child in everyone like he once used to. Old man jingle is fine with this - albeit rather sad - but things don’t go quite as planned. An anonymous person gets the worlds best tracker/hacker/free agent to tag a seismic system and said anonymous person abuses that to find Santa’s location at the north pole and kidnap him. With no leads to go on, the ELF ends up needing to team up with resident naughty lister trackerman and find Santa on a very tight deadline to save Christmas!
Actors do decent here. Sure, I wouldn’t say it’s anyone chasing after major award nominations or anything of that sort, but they all seem to be enjoying their roles and playing into it without just cashing in on it. Depending on which actor, they bring a bit of seriousness or goofiness to their role, which of course all comes to play together and aid in the things like comedy and cheerfulness. Our main track-a-hack-a-captain america get’s to lay into the “this is unbelievable” angle and stand as a common person amongst all this mythical and wild stuff going on around him when he ends up getting volun-told to help find big S himself, and him and the Rock have a good time playing off of each other. Rock is, perhaps not surprisingly, very much a role that feels like he would be expected to play here - throwing one part buff guy into a mix of aggravated goody good. Side characters are there and do fine, and are generally just as entertaining as the main crew even if they aren’t the main folks being followed.
Characters are characters for sure, although you will in fact get two in this movie that actually experience growth. I feel like this is a big deal, as usually when I’m watching stuff that’s not so much the case - not that it bothers me per say as long as I’m being entertained, but I’m sure some folks reading these things wouldn’t mind a little more depth to their movie pie. Anyways, our naughty-list lead has some decent motivations at times, even if they are incredibly misguided and not quite playing out as he would think or hope - a classic “hearts in the right place but really dumb call” sort of fellow. He’s got a lot to learn over the course of the movie - including the whole Santa is real bitl Our other lead is the Rock as you would expect him - struggles to see the good in people after doing the work for a very long time, and takes a lot of the blame for old Father Christmas getting ‘napped. Some of the side characters even experience a bit of a character growth in there - although it’s not really followed like it is with our main two. All in all though - most are perhaps a little bit generic, but it fits fine in the movie and doesn’t really detract I don’t think.
Santa and his Elf.
It’s a pretty modern affair. Expect lots of regular wear and costumes that you wouldn’t bat an eyelid at if you saw it on the street during your daily routine. Of course that means they did a great job with them - but wait, there’s more! Yeah, thanks to the fantasy family adventure side of Christmas, we get a bunch of other costumes as well - like the ELF guard suits, some kidnapper military garb, and a whole bunch of stuff that might fit more into the effects department than the costume department. Either way, the entire Krampus lair batch of characters are fun to look at - and I can certianly see some of them at least being in the costume departments book of accomplishments. Props are pretty varied and fun as well - with an emphasis on a Ant-Man style shrinker-grower are gauntlet thing used by our main ELF allowing things as mundane as toy cars to be turned into normal size real cars and trucks, or supersized boxing robot defenders. It’s all pretty fun and done well enough that you don’t spend time being taken out of it - and it mostly all services the story fine, which is a bonus.
Effects get a lot to do. This here is a modern holiday magic movie, so there are effects all over the place - from weird sci-fi style stunners, magic-powered super sleighs, giant and small monster types, and even a chicken. Yeah, there’s a lot going on in here. It’s pretty much all on the level or pretty good, and even in moments where it might not be as great it’s still generally fun. There isn’t necessarily a ton that feels like it’s just forced into the movie for the sake of being overly visual - I mean yes, they didn’t need an ELF to be a polar bear, but on an imagination level it makes perfect sense that a talking polar bear would work for Santa just as much as our lead naughty list would immediately start wondering if the toy store had a wonder woman toy when he saw a Hot Wheels car get turned into a real usable version of that car. Perhaps a bit crude of a joke, but I got a chuckle out of it.
Comedy is subjective, as is overall seasonal enjoyment. That said, I had a pretty decent time with it, and although it’s not going to tear the top spots from my favorites, it does play into what it is well. I got a couple of chuckles from the humor - perhaps sometimes because it was just the right amount of stupid to get me to laugh - and it both takes place on and just before the holiday as well as follows those themes. Yep, that’s right folks, all that talk of the naughty list and being a good person and how everyone isn’t just naturally bad is there in the movie. You also get the commentary on the feeling that people are getting worse, some family bond stuff, and a little dropping into other holiday myths - specifically around the winter/Christmas themed ones. I mean, you might not come out of the movie righting a novel on all it’s deepest thoughts, but for the folks who like the more meaningful holiday movies out there, this one is at least not devoid of all of that.
Getting drafted on the naughty list.
It’s a fun movie. Honestly, it’s a lot more fun a movie than the initial reaction headlines critics were putting out made me believe it would be. You would think I would have trusted to ignore them long, long ago when I realized more than half of people hate movies I enjoy more than I supposedly should (my favorite go to example is my favorite Stephen King movies are all in the sub 30% scores). I’m not the biggest Christmas season person, but it’s got the charm one would expect out of it, and it’s got the Rock doing what the Rock normally does in a movie - so it pretty much delivers everything you want based on the cover except maybe a little more Lucy Liu- but hey, nothing says they couldn’t turn this thing into some kind of franchise and then you’d get a ton more Lucy. Either way, it’s a fun romp of a movie, has some jokes and some decent effects, and splatters Christmas feeling around like someone whose had too much eggnog. Perhaps a decent option for a family movie night when you get sick of 24 hours of that other Christmas movie.