You foul Temptress, what has thou wrought upon us
Fuck you Red One
It’s hard to imagine a concept that could play so well across so many different genres than Santa Claus being kidnapped.
It could be a comedy, somebody sees Santa Claus in their house ties him up and hijinks ensue, until they all realize the meaning of Christmas.
It could be a horror movie, Krampus kidnaps Santa Claus, unleashes pain and torture upon naughty (read: all) children), until they realize the meaning of Christmas (not singing at godforsaken hours).
It could be a RomCom wherein Santa Claus bonks his head and wakes up in Northern Minnesota and befriends and eventually beds the local innkeep (don’t worry, in this version Mrs. Claus succumbed to… let’s say cancer, they do still have that in the North Pole, right), wherein she rides the pole and realizes the meaning of Christmas.
It could be a drama where a father kidnaps Santa Claus to prove how much he loves his estranged daughter, but really he just needed to show her that he loved her, and they realize the meaning of Christmas.
It could be an erotic thriller where Santa is blackmailed by one of his sexy elves, but he is totally innocent, or is he, and everyone realizes the meaning of Christmas.
It could be a summer blockbuster where Santa is just chilling on Amity Island with his best friend Martin Brody and Brody’s dipshit friend Hooper shows up and then a shark appears to eat Santa but because Hooper is a fuck up we never know the answer until we realize the meaning of Christmas.
It could be Santa Claus is delivering presents and two sexy co-eds awake and fuck the living daylights out Santa Claus until he sprays eggnog (Sanat’s jizz is eggnog right?) and they realize the meaning of Christmas (in this scenario Mrs. Claus has also died of cancer, or maybe a heart attack, Santa Claus is a sexual being but he is faithful).
Any one of those ideas would have been better than the absolute fucking turd of a film that is Red One. In fact, I would let my five-year-old son and three-year-old daughter watch any one of those film ideas, including the porno, before I let them watch Red One.
The joke is on me though. I give AMC my $25 bucks a month to watch three films a week and this happened to be a light week and when I went to watch A Real Pain last night, an actual good film that kinda wrecked me and I am still processing a day later I was stuck with seeing the Dwayne Johnson vehicle Red One.
“But David it can’t be that bad it has JK Simmons as a Jacked Santa, Kiernan Shipka is in it, fuck Lucy Liu, where has she been for so many years. No fucking way, Captain America is here, oh wait he has a terrible Boston accent, well I guess I can overlook that, he is bad-ass, oh he’s playing a schlubby hacker, oh then eventually out of nowhere he becomes a bad-ass like Captain America, ok yeah that tracks…”
This movie is the stupidest fucking movie I have seen in a theater this year. Hard stop. And I’ve seen some pretty stupid fucking movies this year, cough, Villians Inc., cough,. There were about 10 people in my Imax screening of this movie, it is that fucking bad, and you know what, jokes on me for even thinking that maybe this wouldn’t be in the running for the worst movie I have sat all the way through for this year (flowers for It Ends With Us, which I actually walked out of). But oh my lord is it in the running.
At this point, assuming you are still reading, you might be saying, David, you haven’t even given us a basic plotline for the movie. To which I would respond, imagine the worst DCU movie, combined with the worst Marvel movie, combined with Madame Webb, combined with the Taken franchise and you’d still probably have a better movie.
But with regards to the actual movie Chris Evans character is a guy who’s on the naughty list who unwittingly helps Gryla (a Christmas Witch) kidnap Santa. The Rock who is his personal security detail and literally fucking up his job then has to recruit the guy who unknowingly helped the Christmas Witch to find Santa, yada yada yada Santa was in the North Pole all along and the Christmas Witch wants to capture everyone in Snow Globes. Oh also Chris Evans and his estranged kid are captured in snow globes but they break out because he remembers one fucking thing about his kid he refuses to be a father to, until this very moment, plot twist!!!
The only redeeming factor is a jacked JK Simmons as Santa Claus ripping reps, but that is basically 45 seconds of the film. Bonnie Hunt as Mrs. Claus and Mary Elizabeth Ellis as Chris Evans ex were criminally under used. Kiernan Shipka as Gryla was great, but she basically acted against a screen the whole time. Oh and did I mention Lucy Liu is in this picture as some sort of Director of Mythical creatures, which begs the question, does Santa answer to her and are Santa and the Loch Ness Monster besties?
This movie was 2 hours of fucking stupidity and terrible CGI. I hated watching it, I hate you for even considering watching it, I hate myself for watching it, and I am very excited for the podcast episode of this movie on How Did This Get Made?
4 stars!