Critics reviews

But bigger doesn't always mean better, and even with a globetrotting narrative, A-list stars, and reindeer with the ability to hyperspace travel like the Millennium Falcon, these elements can't cover over thematic negligence and a garish visual palette. It's all gaudy wrapping with no substance.

In the end, Red One, isn’t egregiously terrible, as its trailers portended, but the film’s mild streak of eccentricity isn’t enough to elevate it. It’s neither naughty or nice, and in Santa’s book, that likely means it just ends up getting nothing this Christmas.

A charmless, CGI-heavy spectacle, Red One falls into an ill-considered audience no man’s land: it’s too intense for little kids (we get to visit Krampus in what appears to be a yuletide S&M dungeon) and too bland to attract teens and genre fans.

Getting Dwayne Johnson and Chris Evans is neither an upgrade nor a downgrade: if the script was better or the whole film didn’t look like a death metal rave in an aircraft hangar it might have matched Spirited’s modest enjoyment value.

There’s nothing wrong with a big-hearted film for Christmas, but this commercial and formulaic slice of content is a toy destined to be forgotten, not by Boxing Day, but mid-November.

In the fun but strained Red One, director Jake Kasdan serves up an effects-heavy action comedy with a disarming sweetness that is undone by an overly complicated plot and some tired blockbuster conventions.

If Red One were a disaster, it’d be more interesting. Instead, it’s a technically passable action-comedy transparently stitched together from parts scavenged from other movies.

There’s a little bit of heart here, in the story of two people who have lost faith in Christmas for very different reasons, but more often this feels engineered in a lab to provide seasonal spectacle.

“Red One” will make you not only bummed about the holidays ahead, but about cinema’s future as well.

It’s a reasonably entertaining three-star blockbuster with some fun ideas, a game cast, and a brisk storytelling style that never runs out of steam... a functional, breezy, slightly above average action-comedy.