You know what I love about being gay? Our art. Queer art is so strikingly realized that, even when it gets critically scorned, it still echoes throughout the ages. Batman & Robin, for instance, was battered in 1997 as "the worst Batman movie ever." 27 years later, though, we're still talking about Bat-Nipples and ice puns while countless other bad 1997 movies have vanished from people's minds. Ed Wood's Glen or Glenda, meanwhile, has inspired everything from Mystery Science Theater 3000 jokes to thoughtful appreciative discussions more than 70 years after its release.
To just exist as a queer person is an act of rebellion. It doesn’t matter if you’re walking around in a rainbow dress (two of which I own!) or just a T-shirt and shorts. Existing as YOUR version of queerness is amazing and makes the world a little better. That innately subversive quality to queerness seeps into most of our art. Save for the occasional The Prom, queer cinema, even when it’s a boondoggle, inevitably leaves an impression. You may hate it. You may love it. But you won’t forget it.
On the opposite end of the spectrum is Red One. To spend two hours in this Jake Kasdan directorial effort is to spend two hours gazing into the maw of insecure cis-het masculinity. There is no creative boldness that’ll inspire fierce audience responses of any kind. As another Christmas movie protagonist once said: “welcome to the party, pal.”
Not five minutes into Red One, Santa Claus (J.K. Simmons) and Cypher Raige Cade Yeagar Callum Drift (Dwayne Johnson) exit a shopping mall to return to the North Pole. How do they begin their voyage? By hopping into standard white SUVs, of course. How visually exciting! They then go over to a drab hangar bay devoid of any color. Here, the U.S. military is waiting to give Santa an escort. Shusuke Kaneko once observed that 1998’s American Godzilla showed that "Americans seem unable to accept a creature that cannot be put down by their arms." Now, Red One carries on that tradition, suggesting that the only force on Earth that even comes close to Santa’s powers is people in F-22 Raptors.
Eventually, Santa and Drift return to the North Pole. Me and my family love love love Christmas movies, so we’ve seen plenty of variations on this domicile in cinema. Elf, for instance, had a Rankin-Bass-inspired interpretation of Santa’s domain. This is the only North Pole I can recall in cinematic history that’s so relentlessly dim. It’s always nighttime in the birthplace of holiday cheer. Wide shots of this place, with occasional neon lights interrupting a foggy nighttime aesthetic, make the North Place look like a Blade Runner backdrop. Ramping up the brightness and colors would make the feature look “too gay” or “silly, I guess. This is a SERIOUS Christmas movie.
You can tell Red One is “not your dad’s Christmas movie” because it’s obsessed with explaining everything related to Christmas. Santa doesn’t have elves anymore, for instance. Now he has an E.L.F., which is an acronym assigned to bodyguards. The naughty list has an elaborate origin story. There’s also a S.H.I.E.L.D.-like organization named M.O.R.A. in charge of keeping track of fantastical things. I’m sure Red One financier Amazon has a terrible M.O.R.A. procedural pilot in development. All these elements come into play when ancient witch Gryla (Kiernan Shipka) kidnaps Santa. Drift and M.O.R.A. head Zoe Harlow (Lucy Liu) need to get him back in 36 hours or else Christmas won't happen.
To save the holidays, they call on the aid of Jack O'Malley (Chris Evans), a cynical hacker who can find ANYONE. You can tell Evans is NOT Captain America anymore because, as O'Malley, he ogles women's asses, gives on-screen son Dylan (Wesley Kimmel) terrible advice, and only cares about money. O’Malley’s introduction sinks Red One even deeper into insipid creative instincts. For one thing, O’Malley is first taken to a secret M.O.R.A. base that looks ridiculously cheap. This domicile for a fantastical organization manifests on-screen looking like a cross between a storage unit and the void that the Anchorman 2 teaser trailer took place in.
To get more outlandish would require a level of imagination Kasdan and screenwriter Chris Morgan just don’t have. O’Malley getting hired to save Christmas also introduces Red One’s terrible buddy cop banter between this hacker and Drift. Every word they exchange makes nails on a chalkboard sound as pleasing as Sabrina Carpenter’s vocals. Listening to them bicker is like hearing the same person talk to themselves for two hours. There’s no real variation between these cynical bro’s who have the same comedic line deliveries and physicality. Also, every other line out of their mouths is some sort of variation on “well, that happened!” on the wackiness happening around them. An extended gag where Drift forces O’Malley to say “Let’s save Christmas” “properly” had me yearning for the sweet release of death.
1974's The Year Without a Santa Claus is not a super cohesive TV special. It's like cocaine incarnate, a haphazardly written creation that keeps throwing out new plotlines on a whim. However, it has the audacity to commit to its weirdness without any self-consciousness. Why snark when you can just have fun with The Miser Brothers? In contrast, Red One’s world is impossible to invest in because its annoying characters keep apologizing for all the Yuletide whimsy. All that confidence underpinning even the most divisive piece of queer cinema, it’s absent here. Heck, even Kasdan’s previous comedic dedication in his 2007 masterpiece Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story is M.I.A.
The only one here who doesn't have melatonin-laced eggnog flowing through their veins is makeup designer Joel Harlow. He does concoct some enjoyable prosthetic and creature designs for various partygoers hanging with Krampus (Kristofer Hivju). On the opposite side of the spectrum, Johnson is going through the motions in his lead role. Looking back on his work, I’m not even sure if his facial expression ever fluctuated during the runtime. His being such a snore is especially a problem since Red One focuses lengthy scenes on Drift explaining North Pole lore to O’Malley in “riveting” locales like a car. Try not to drift off (no pun intended) thanks to Johnson’s lifeless line deliveries. The man who once made the words “pimps don’t commit suicide” iconic is truly sleepwalking here.
Eventually, Johnson and Evans have to put aside their snarky wit for a staggeringly miscalculated Christmas movie. Did you ever watch Miracle on 34th Street and Meet Me in St. Louis and wish they ended like a DC Extended Universe movie? Kasdan has you covered. Red One concludes with everyone turning into digital stunt doubles to fight a gigantic CG beast. This skirmish is set within shockingly dim lighting that, even in an IMAX auditorium, makes everything hard to parse out. Yuletide-themed movies like Elf and It’s a Wonderful Life concluded with everyday people uniting during the holidays. Red One, meanwhile, frantically tries to mimic a standard 2010s blockbuster movie finale. Any sense of humanity is eschewed in favor of punching and inert Chekhov’s Gun pay-offs.
After all that derivative mayhem, Red One has the audacity to wrap with a pair of snarky one-liners that instantly become the absolute worst closing lines of any 2024 movie. So ends a feature that doesn’t just crystallize countless modern blockbuster shortcomings. Red One encapsulates the sickening mindset of capitalistic cis-het storytelling. Modern Hollywood is obsessed with origin stories and mythos-heavy explanations. Nothing magical just exists. There must be a man behind the curtain pulling the strings. Everything must be grounded in reality or deeply complicated mechanics. That way, these childish things can seem “real”, “adult”, and “gritty”.
That’s how you get a Joker movie where Harley Quinn is called Lee. Or a Guy Ritchie King Arthur film that spends two hours providing an origin story for “The Round Table.” And now we have a Santa Claus movie desperate to seem “cool” for bros. Feast your eyes on the North Pole drained of color, where everyone (even Santa and towering snowmen) has abs, and nobody can do anything magical without a quip. It’s Yuletide Cheer as filtered through Dana White, Joss Whedon, and the sets of a CBS procedural. All the confidence lacing queer pop culture like But I’m a Cheerleader, Rafiki, or Chappell Roan music, it’s absent here. Red One is the epitome of cis-het creative insecurity. In trying to seem “cool”, the latest Dwayne Johnson star vehicle is just lame…and realized with all the production value of a Disney Channel movie to boot!
“The world of the heterosexual is a sick and boring life” Aunt Ida intoned years ago. Just watch Red One for proof.