Red One (Kasdan, 2024)
On the pitch level, Red One sounds as though it should be critic-proof. The always likable Dwayne Johnson stars as an elf who heads Santa’s security team only to see the indispensable star of Christmas kidnapped on the eve of his annual mad dash around the globe. Everything about the idea invites smiles. He’s an elf! (Wonder if he’s related to Will Ferrell’s Buddy?) He has to save Christmas! If that’s not enough, he teams up with Chris Evans as a “level 4” naughty lister, an adult version of Natalie Wood’s Miracle on 34th Street archetype who cares even less for the spirit of Christmas than he does for its meaning. The sourpuss who learns to love Christmas is a holiday staple, and Johnson is more or less synonymous with big, huggable, niceness. What could possibly go wrong?
It didn’t take long, though, for the film to remind me that all films should work at the pitch level or else they wouldn’t get made. Executing on a cool idea means more than simply figuring out what feelings you want to evoke — you have to figure out how you are going to evoke them.
The easiest specifics to illustrate execution problems are the pacing and tonal shifts in the first half. After Santa is kidnapped, Evans is picked up by the security force (headed by a completely wasted Lucy Liu) and taken for an interrogation. Evans plays this scene more or less straight up — any normal person would be freaked out by a walking Polar Bear. But Johnson is comically overplaying the let-me-at-him bad cop schtick. It’s a reasonable decision for a family/kid’s movie, but the performances aren’t in sync, so the the movie lurches. It’s worth saying explicitly that both Evans and Johnson are fine actors, so I don’t really know if this is a writing problem, a directing problem, or an acting problem. I just know that is hard for an ensemble to find the rhythm when its two stars are playing different tempo.
It’s only after the kidnapping story line is resolved that the film leans into its more charming strengths — J.K. Simmons as a no-nonsense, superhero Santa who has to burn so many calories that he needs constant cookie fuel. It this had been a one hour network television special back in the day, the conclusion may well have made it into the Holiday classic it so desperately wants to be. But by the time it gets to the good stuff, the theater audience felt a little restless.
Maybe once the movie is on DVD, it will be one of those films that everyone half watches while unwrapping presents or doing other things until it gets to the ten minutes that everyone wants to watch.
