Last week, Warner Bros were in the firing line for “burying” Clint Eastwood’s Juror #2 in the States: it was only shown in 50 cinemas and given minimal marketing support. While it’s had wider distribution in the UK, audiences in both countries will be wondering if the studio’s second release in a fortnight isn’t, in fact, the one that should have been pushed to one side.
Yet, with no little irony, Red One is liberally peppered across our screens. This early festive movie – let’s not use ‘the C word’ in early November – has all the makings of a blockbuster, with a couple of top names, action a-plenty and an eye-watering budget but, in the hands of Mr Jumanji himself, Jake Kasdan, it sags in the middle like the soggiest of confections. The action revolves around Santa, code name Red (J K Simmons) and his high-tech operation on the 24th of December, one that he trains for all year. He is, however, about to lose his head of security, Callum Drift (Dwayne Johnson), but that all changes when Red is kidnapped and Drift calls in the reluctant services of notorious bounty hunter Jack O’Malley (Chris Evans) to help find him and – yes, you’ve guessed it – save The Day.
All of which sounds horribly familiar, as do most of the other references in the film to The Big Day and, despite Kasdan’s efforts to create a higher-tec Santa’s toy making operation, his workforce looks like it’s been imported from Hogwarts and Star Wars. For what is, in theory, an original film, there’s disappointingly little about it that is either new or different. It does have one saving grace, however, and that’s Red himself, as played by J K Simmons. But, yet again, he finds himself under-used, just as in Juror #2 last week. You do, however, buy him as Santa – twinkly eyed, plain speaking and with a commitment to his job that means he works out every single day, knowing that when The Big Night comes, he’ll burn something like 4 million calories delivering all those presents. Sadly, the plot demands that he’s around for the early part of the action and towards the end – the literally supersonic global delivery sequence is the film’s highlight – but, without him, everything else in between simply sags.
All of which shows that Red One was capable of being something full of energy, invention and heart but, somehow, it all got lost along the way. There’s next to no chemistry between the two leads, with Evans exclaiming “what’s going on?” at just about every plot development. We know how he feels. Neither can it make up its mind whether it wants to be a fantasy or more of a horror and, while Kristofer Hivju clearly has a ball as the monstrous Krampus, his storyline is very much at odds with everything else that’s gone before. His prosthetics, incidentally, are great, leaving you wondering why on earth the special effects are so horribly shoddy.
It delivers a less than auspicious start to this year’s cinematic festive season, wrapped up in a multitude of cliches. Whether things will improve will only become clear over the coming weeks but, in the meantime, this is a much more “no, no, no” than “ho, ho, ho.”
★★
In UK cinemas now / Dwayne Johnson, Chris Evans, J K Simmons, Lucy Liu, Bonnie Hunt, Nick Kroll and Kristofer Hivju / Dir: Jake Kasdan / Warner Bros / 12A
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