If there was a Guinness World Record for the most jacked-up Santa in a big-budget, Hollywood-financed, holiday-themed action-comedy, Oscar winner J.K. Simmons (Whiplash) would win hands down and biceps curled for his committed portrayal of Father Christmas (aka, St. Nick, aka Santa Claus) in Jake Kasdan's (Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, Zero Effect) otherwise disposable, forgettable Red One.
Simmons' Crossfit-loving, hyper-trophied Santa not only unironically loves those fading odes to crass commercialism, American shopping malls but also works out obsessively in his private gym back at the North Pole, relying on his personal security guard and nominal head of ELF (Enforcement Logistics and Fortification), Callum Drift (Dwayne Johnson), to spot him when he goes big on bench-pressing free weights. They also share a longtime (as in centuries-old) bromance. Drift, though, has lost faith in a world that has gone sour with meanness, cruelty, and avarice (talk about prescient). He's also a short-timer, sticking around for one more, last Christmas with Santa before retiring permanently from security duties.
Not so fast, as Drift's understandable lack of faith in his fellow human beings gets upended when a group of mercs break into the North Pole's Wakanda-inspired hidden city, kidnap Santa before he can put his mega-sized biceps to good use, and threaten global disaster if Santa can't do his yearly Christmas Even thing, delivering presents to the world's children, and ruining Christmas for everyone.
With Santa gone and Drift's boss, Zoe (Lucy Liu), on his case, the inflexible, humorless Drift reluctantly agrees to partner with Jack O'Malley (Chris Evans), the hacker/tracker inadvertently responsible for Santa's kidnapping (he found and sold the coordinates of Santa's city to an unknown client). A lifelong "naughty lister" who soured on Christmas at an early age, O'Malley isn't anyone's idea of a hero: He's a drunk, an inveterate gambler, and a deadbeat dad to a teen, Dylan (Wesley Kimmel), who just wants to chill with his undeserving, selfish, self-centered dad.
The usual, easily digestible, inoffensive life lessons will be learned. O'Malley will regain faith in the spirit of Christmas and, in turn, himself while the curmudgeonly, repressed Drift will learn to lighten up and play with others (O'Malley, specifically). Before that happens, though, they have to save Santa and Christmas, starting with a little globe-trotting (USA, Mexico, Germany), an unfriendly meet-and-greet with Santa's resentful stepbrother, Krampus (Kristofer Hivju), and multiple encounters with the supervillain behind the kidnapping, Gryla (Kiernan Shipka), a shapeshifting witch obsessed with punishing everyone and anyone who's ever been on a naughty list (i.e., practically everyone).
With paper-thin characters, barely functional dialogue, and an under-abundance of humor (verbal, physical, or otherwise) courtesy of Chris Morgan's (the Fast & Furious franchise) slapdash script, Kasdan works incredibly hard to keep the pace moving at a rapid, even frenetic pace to cover for the obvious flaws in Morgan's script. He almost succeeds once or twice, specifically when Red One leaves the curiously under-rendered environment and CGI characters of the ultra-advanced, high-tech North Pole for Krampus' castle-like home. Filled with a wide assortment of practical-based creatures and monsters, Krampus and his guests feel like they've temporarily slipped into Red One from another, far superior film, one lightly inspired by Guillermo del Toro at his most fantastical.
Unfortunately, the endearingly mean-spirited interlude at Krampus' domicile doesn't last long and Red One reverts to Drift and O'Malley back in the "real" world, tracking down clues and connections to Santa's disappearance before the predictably epic-scaled climax involving our wayward antagonists-turned-friends and a vengeful Gryla. It's even duller and less imaginative than it sounds, but at least Red One resolves every plot thread, story point, and character arc before the credits, leaving the promise -- or threat -- of a sequel offscreen where it belongs. Hopefully, it'll remain there.
The film opens today (Friday, November 15), only in movie theaters, via Amazon/MGM Studios.