Red One

Rated PG-13 • Theaters

Perhaps the last truly classic Christmas movie for the whole family was Elf back in 2003. Other Christmas movies have come out since, but they’ve largely been in sub-genres that appeal to certain segments of the population: animated movies like Dr. Seuss’ The Grinch for kids, various Hallmark movies for moms, and R-rated action movies like Violent Night for certain guys. (Klaus might fit the bill, but it was largely missed since Netflix didn’t give it much of a theatrical release.) Will Red One, a family-friendly action comedy, change that?

Red One follows an amoral cyber-tracker named Jack O’Malley (Chris Evans) who accidentally helps a shadowy group kidnap Santa Claus (J.K. Simmons). But then Zoe Harlow (Lucy Liu), director of MORA (Mythological Oversight and Restoration Authority) forces Jack to help the no-nonsense head of Santa’s security team, Callum Drift (Dwayne Johnson), rescue Santa before Christmas.

The film’s mashup of family-­Christmas and action-movie genre tropes often works. Seeing a buff Santa working in a North Pole that’s run like a military operation is intrinsically funny. Jack’s and Callum’s different forms of cynicism about a world in need of change work in both genres, and their buddy-cop banter often gets a laugh. Some action scenes (particularly Jack’s with MORA at the beginning) feel cool while staying family-friendly.

The movie also asks some hard questions about humanity’s sinful nature. The villain believes Santa’s methods of redeeming people through good cheer failed, so she plans to trap the “naughty” forever. She delivers the chilling line: “I’m going to do in one night what you couldn’t do in hundreds of years: make the world a better place.”

Yet the movie never leans into its good qualities. It doesn’t develop what this military-op North Pole world is like, and it doesn’t have enough fun with the concept beyond the initial joke. Most of the action sequences do the bare minimum. And for every joke that lands, three feel coughed up by artificial intelligence. Jack’s conversations with his estranged wife and son feel grounded at the beginning, but by the end they drown in clichés.

Red One is a movie at war with itself. It wants to appeal to dads, not offend moms, and be safe for kids. A sleazy bad guy on a beach with bikini-clad women gets frozen in ice, but the script awkwardly assures us he’s not dead.

The movie never quite follows its hard questions to truthful answers either. Instead, it opts for safe ones. Spoilers ahead: It turns out that Santa’s adopted brother Krampus was the one who created the “naughty list” in the first place, not Santa. Does this reflect our modern discomfort with a God who might send people to hell? When Jack changes his ways at the end—showing the “naughty” can become “nice”—that’s the only repudiation of the villain’s views we get. Yet not everyone changes, so the question of how to deal with evil—the very question the movie itself raises—gets glossed over.

It’s been a long time since we had a truly crowd-pleasing Christmas classic that appeals to the whole family. Red One deserves credit for trying to bring that back. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have enough confidence in itself or the audience to embrace its best features. It won’t be remembered as either “naughty” or “nice.” It just won’t be remembered at all.