Santa Claus is cool. He delivers presents to all of the children of the world in one night, he commands eight flying reindeer, and he stands up to fascists in that one stop-motion animated movie. But you know what’s cooler than Santa? Marvel movies. That was presumably the thought process behind Red One, the Christmas action-comedy that came out last year to generally dismal reviews. But for as much as critics disliked it, everyone else seems to love it. Now, what seems to be one of the most divisive Christmas movies of all time is a certified streaming hit, with Red One becoming one of the top movies on Prime Video.
Red One, directed by Jake Kasdan (the man behind Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, Jumanji: The Next Level, and perfect satirical masterpiece Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story), has a weirdly impressive pair of Rotten Tomatoes scores: Only 30 percent of critics gave it a positive review, but 89 percent of audience members said they liked it. Movie stars like to bring out the old “critics don’t get it, it’s for the fans” excuse when they make a bad movie, but it genuinely seems to be true for Red One.
‘Red One’ Gives Santa’s Workshop to the Avengers
Red One stars Dwayne Johnson as Callum Drift, the head of Santa Claus’ security team. On Christmas Eve, Santa — a.k.a. Red One, played by a buff and bearded J.K. Simmons — is kidnapped by a naughty military force, forcing some kind of S.H.I.E.L.D.-style intelligence organization (led by Lucy Liu as not-Nick Fury) to call in the infamous snarky bounty hunter Jack O’Malley (Chris Evans) for help. There’s also a talking polar bear who is friends with Santa’s team.
That all seems fun and/or funny in theory, and both Johnson and Evans can play those exact characters in their sleep, but… that was basically the problem critics had with Red One. It’s funny in theory, and the leads don’t have to try at all. You end up with an action movie that’s not very funny and a comedy movie that’s more about action, which is the sort of thing that generally doesn’t make for very positive reviews.
Thankfully, Red One is for the fans, specifically fans of Christmas and arcane holiday lore (shout out to everyone who knows Icelandic Christmas troll Grýla), as long as we’re talking about secular Coca-Cola Christmas and not religious Christmas. This is a “the season is magic” movie and not a “Jesus’ birthday” movie, which does help Red One avoid limiting its appeal. Everyone, apparently, can get on board with Santa as a Tony Stark-style superhero mogul, but a movie where The Rock and Captain America respectfully celebrate baby Jesus probably wouldn’t be lighting up the Prime Video charts (not to mention that you’d probably want to cast a different famous Chris in a movie like that).
So yeah, congratulations to Red One, the new iconic holiday classic that everyone loves. Go put an inflatable Callum Drift in your yard and hang the Jack O’Malley star on your tree.
- Release Date
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November 15, 2024
- Runtime
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123 Minutes
- Director
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Jake Kasdan