‘Red One’ Review: Dwayne Johnson and Chris Evans Save Christmas but Don’t Spare the Audience

Dwayne Johnson’s Yuletide action-fantasy-comedy, Red One, is not to be confused with his 2021 action-comedy crime caper, Red Notice. The new film is getting a wide theatrical release, for starters, while the earlier one went straight to Netflix, topped the most-streamed chart for a minute and then was never spoken of again — almost as if it never existed.

The pop-cultural footprint of Jake Kasdan’s laborious holiday entry, while it insistently screams “Next-Gen Christmas Classic!” at you, seems unlikely to be much different. This is a high-concept, CG-saturated bore that lacks heart and infectious humor, even if it huffs and puffs its way to a little poignancy in the end.

Fast & Furious franchise veteran Chris Morgan’s screenplay, from a story by fellow producer Hiram Garcia, plays like the result of a pitch meeting in which some over-eager junior on the studio development team said, “Hey, let’s do Elf, but with a kidnapping plot and shit tons of awesome technology!”

The movie pairs Johnson with Chris Evans as an unlikely duo on a globe-hopping mission to track down J.K. Simmons’ abducted Santa Claus (code name “Red One”) in time for the jolly bearded guy to board the sleigh and save Christmas. It’s stuffed with mythology and magic, and yet remains stubbornly unmagical.

Evans plays Jack O’Malley, an unscrupulous opportunist introduced as a mouthy preteen boy (Wyatt Hunt) collecting cash from his cousins in exchange for what he claims is definitive proof that Santa Claus does not exist. Thirty years later, he’s lifting other people’s lattes from the café pickup counter before heading home to a bank of computer monitors from which he surfs the dark web, operating as the world’s greatest hacker/tracker for hire, under the alias “The Wolf.”

Johnson is Callum Drift, head of the North Pole security team Enforcement, Logistics and Fortification (E.L.F., geddit?) responsible for Santa’s protection. Simmons’ Nick, as Cal fondly addresses him, likes to do the department store rounds ahead of each year’s big delivery run. The movie sets him up like a U.S. president, with a Secret Service motorcade escorting him from the shopping mall to a hangar where his team of digitally rendered reindeer stand ready for takeoff, hitched to a golden sleigh styled like a futuristic chariot.

Once airborne, they switch to hyper-speed and zip back to the North Pole, a domed super-city furnished with advanced technological capabilities yet staffed with elves that look disturbingly like mutant Yodas in a child-labor factory. Santa greets Mrs. Claus (Bonnie Hunt) before diving into his gym routine, bench-pressing major poundage to get in optimum shape for the big night.

The only reason for Santa to frown is Cal’s decision, after a few centuries of working together, to resign, making this their final Christmas together. Unlike Nick, Cal can no longer see the good in people: “I love the kids, but the grownups are killing me.” For the first time, the Naughty List is longer than the Nice, and Cal laments that people don’t even care.

Meanwhile, Jack is being paid handsomely by an anonymous employer to hack the Intercontinental Seismic Surveillance System. He identifies a North Pole entry point that has remained concealed for centuries and, before long, a highly coordinated tactical unit has penetrated the dome and made off with Red One while Cal is chasing decoys.

This emergency prompts M.O.R.A., the Mythological Oversight and Restoration Authority (so many acronyms), to spring into action. The organization’s director, Zoe Harlow (Lucy Liu), tracks down the purportedly untraceable Wolf in what seems like seconds and Jack is strong-armed into teaming up with Cal to unmask the kidnappers and rescue Santa.

Coming on the heels of Liu’s terrific work in Steven Soderbergh’s haunted house chiller, Presence (opening Jan. 24), the thoroughly generic role assigned to her here is one of many dispiriting things about Red One. Even when Zoe gets to kick some ass in a fight scene, the action cuts away almost immediately to the armored-up dudes.

That’s not surprising given how much testosterone is clogging the aggressively charmless movie’s arteries — from buff Santa to security squads equipped with high-tech hardware and cool vehicles, from Transformers-like tricks with toys to clashes that push the boundaries of PG-13 violence.

And that’s even before we get to gnarly muscle-bound goat-man Krampus (Kristofer Hivju), Santa’s adopted half-brother. This Dark Lord of Winter defected long ago to a gloomy German castle in the Black Forest, guarded by hellhounds, where his favored nightly ritual is a face-walloping contest with volunteers from his court of freaks.

This is a film that aims for mythological intrigue and rollicking adventure but lands more often in lead-footed bloat, suitably accompanied by Henry Jackman’s hyperventilating score. It’s always busy but seldom fun. The fantasy environments have all the appeal of the center-of-the-earth fairy kingdom in Kenneth Branagh’s instantly forgotten Artemis Fowl. Non-human North Pole workers like talking penguins and a burly polar bear — none of which are ever at risk of being mistaken for real animals — add minimal amusement.

Just as Krampus comes from the Yuletide folklore of Germany, Austria and other parts of Alpine Europe, Morgan’s screenplay also incorporates the Icelandic legend of Christmas Witch Grýla (Kiernan Shipka in a role that begs for Björk), a 900-year-old shapeshifter who transforms from a hideous ogress into a diabolical babe who looks a lot like M3GAN. But there’s no place for any of the delicious campiness of that rogue robot thriller in this tiresome world.

The interlude that comes closest to generating laughs is the brief appearance of Nick Kroll as Ted, who heads up a death-mercenary security force known as the Karmanians. (If you think there’s a Kardashian allusion there, you’ll be waiting for a joke that doesn’t happen.) When Cal and Jack get to Ted on a beach in Aruba, he’s suspended in mid-air by his ankles, possessed by the demonic voice of Grýla. But the droll Kroll is not around long enough to up the levity.

That job mostly lands on the shoulders of Evans, who deserves better and can only do so much with the witless dialogue. Johnson, reuniting with his director on two Jumanji sequels, is on straight-man duty, looking serious and purposeful throughout, until the plot mechanics give him reason to smile again.

Both Krampus and Grýla, who commands a unit of deadly giant snowmen and apparently has 13 sons who kill on command, are villains whose fundamental policy difference with Santa is their focus on punishing those on the Naughty List rather than rewarding those who qualify as Nice.

Jack, unsurprisingly, is a “Level 4” Naughty Lister, whose bad example has managed to rub off on his teenage son Dylan (Wesley Kimmel), despite being a neglectful dad who hardly ever spends time with him. There’s much unfunny banter between jaded Cal and cynical Jack, but if you haven’t guessed the heart-tugging turnaround of both characters well before the closing scenes, then you probably do still believe in Santa.

This holiday entry, which could almost have been called A Fast & Furious Christmas, is so ugly, artificial and overlong that it should cure kids of any belief in magic. It’s a prime example of the ways in which CG effects have impoverished the imaginations of many contemporary filmmakers — making anything possible, but too often at the expense of a human heartbeat. In any case, Red One is the equivalent of a lump of coal in your Christmas stocking.