Red One is a sour sugarplum of a Christmas treat, a cheerfully cynical action comedy for kids - especially the ones who asked Santa Claus for ninja stars and a Nerf gun. Director Jake Kasdan (Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story) and screenwriter Chris Morgan (Fast Five) present their take on Santa as a muscle-bound alpha male (J.K. Simmons) who burns 430 million calories on his big night. “Got to carb up,” he says, cramming a cookie in his mouth.
Macho Santa boasts a general’s strut and a president’s security detail, the latter headed up by a stone-faced Dwayne Johnson, whose character, Cal, is a humorless battle ELF. (Here, that stands for Enforcement, Logistics and Fortification.) Like everyone in the North Pole, Cal is stern and officious - although somewhere under that tight Spandex, he’s managed to wedge a thesaurus. Instead of describing himself as spreading joy to the world, Cal says he delivers packages to “several billion individual domiciles.” When Cal says “good tidings,” it sounds like a threat.
This Christmas is - cliché alert! - Cal’s one last job before retiring at age 542. He no longer believes in the mission, which is to say he no longer believes in humanity. For the first time, there are more names on the naughty list than the nice list. (You, too, may agree.)
