With a budget of $250 million, Red One was set to be this year’s premiere Christmas adventure film. Promotional poster for ‘Red One.’ Photo courtesy of Amazon MGM Studios.

In November, Jake Kasdan’s Christmas-themed action adventure movie “Red One” released in theaters across America. In a bold attempt to reinvent the Christmas-movie genre, this film introduces a new perspective to a beloved holiday. 

Released in theaters on Nov. 15 with a massive budget exceeding $250 million, “Red One” set out to become this year’s Christmas classic. Its impressive cast is filled with both well-known and rising stars, featuring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Lucy Liu, Chris Evans and J.K Simmons. The movie’s plot centers around the kidnapping of Santa, codename “Red One.” and follows Callum Drift (Dwayne Johnson), head of North Pole security, as he leads a mission to rescue Saint Nick.

Although the plot unfolds without major flaws, it does seem to feel predictable at times. For some, this is not necessarily a bad thing, but viewers expecting creativity will be disappointed given such a star-studded cast. In any action adventure film, there is a certain element of predictability that helps the movie progress towards an end theme, but “Red One” struggles between its frequent shifts between Santa’s situation and the main characters. 

Constantly having to keep up with complex relationships between the heroes and Santa’s predicament can feel overwhelming for viewers. Additionally, the extended screen time for the kidnappers and villains fails to effectively explain the kidnapper’s plans and motivations, detracting from the overall narrative. Instead, it weakens the impact of the heroes’ eventual realization when they finally track down the culprits. 

The movie’s writing embraces a cheesy tone, clearly intended for a family cinema outing. Like most of the family-friendly films, there are a few jokes that more mature audiences will understand, but most of the humor is intended for children. While the dialogue is okay at most times, some scenes– like the opening gym scene between Santa and Callum– feel forced as writers are trying to establish a theme.

The acting performances are generally satisfactory, but on major flaw is the underutilization  ofJ.K Simmons in his role as Santa. As mentioned above, there are way more scenes of the kidnappers and Santa than necessary, yet for all of these scenes, J.K Simmons still feels overlooked. For viewers who haven’t seen “Whiplash” or any of the “Spider Man” movies, Simmons might seem like any other character, but for viewers who have seen his other work, Simmons’ performance was quite underwhelming. 

The movie is well produced, although some of the action scenes are lackluster. The CGI and post effects resemble recent Marvel movies, which lacked realism. The soundtrack features Mariah Carey, Laufey and more Christmastime favorites, which certainly adds to the Christmas feel. At times scenes can feel choppy, although the producers do a good job of displaying a world where magical fantasy creatures live in secret amongst society. Overall, however, viewers feel the film is unfinished and had higher expectations from a 250 million dollar budget movie.