Silly stuff but harmless enough
Summary
Red One is pretty much what you expect from the trailers; I remember liking it more the first time I watched it but the second time I mostly hated it.
Plot: When a villain kidnaps Santa Claus from the North Pole, an E.L.F. (Extremely Large and Formidable) operative joins forces with the world’s most accomplished tracker to find him and save Christmas.
Review: Red One wasn’t really on my radar and I was planning to wait until streaming, but it had an advanced screening today so I thought I would get into the festive spirit a little early and check it out.
I had low expectations going in and despite a few entertaining moments Red One fails to really do anything special with some occasionally ugly visuals and an average script.
Chris Evans is good at comedy and in this he plays a bit of a jerk who only cares about himself and is estranged from his son. I liked their relationship as the son could so easily have been the annoying, obnoxious teen we get in so many movies, but he’s actually a good kid who just wants his dad to be around more.
There are several fight scenes as well as some chases which elevate this to watchable. J.K. Simmons is a great Santa although it is a small role and I wish he was in it more.
I was talking with one of my friends the other day and we were saying how Dwayne Johnson tends to just play the same character in every movie and Red One is no different, however, he is always charismatic and is immediately likeable in this. I love how he and Lucy Liu play it all completely straight faced despite most of it being utter nonsense.
The music score by Henry Jackman was suitably epic and worked really well for the big set-pieces but wasn’t all that memorable.
Overall, Red One has a few entertaining action scenes but is really more for the young ones; some of the visual effects aren’t the greatest and like so many modern movies it is at times just ugly. Still, there are plenty of worse Christmas movies out there and this is harmless enough to be worth watching once.