Review: ‘Red One’ (2024), starring Dwayne Johnson, Chris Evans, Lucy Liu and J.K. Simmons

November 12, 2024

by Carla Hay

Dwayne Johnson and Chris Evans in “Red One” (Photo by Karen Neal/Amazon Content Services)

“Red One” (2024)

Directed by Jake Kasdan

Culture Representation: Taking place in the United States and in the fictional North Pole, the sci-fi/fantasy/action film “Red One” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with some African Americans and Asians) and fictional creatures representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: A rebellious bounty hunter/computer hacker and Santa Claus’ uptight security chief meet each other and team up to find and rescue Santa Claus, who has been kidnapped.

Culture Audience: “Red One” will appeal mainly to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and Christmas-themed movies that are loud, hyperactive and silly.

Kristofer Hivju and Dwayne Johnson in “Red One” (Photo by Frank Masi/Amazon Content Services)

The Christmas action comedy “Red One” is the equivalent of Santa Claus delivering an avalanche of coal. The incoherent plot is about rescuing a kidnapped Santa, but viewers will feel like the ones being taken hostage by this unfunny and bloated abomination. It’s the type of big-budget movie that looks like it came from a low-rent concept for a video game with product placements.

Directed by Jake Kasdan and written by Chris Morgan, “Red One” lurches from scene to scene, often by explaining what’s going on in a sloppy and hyperactive way. There is no character in this movie that has an emotional range that goes beyond (1) inflicting chaos or (2) reacting to the chaos inflicted. There’s some half-hearted preaching about adults keeping their inner child alive during the Christmas holidays, but it all comes across as tacked-on sentimentality.

Product placements and visual effects are the main priorities for “Red One,” which has a story that’s overstuffed with stupid distractions and moronic dialogue. The movie clumsily begins with a scene showing future bounty hunter Jack O’Malley as a kid (played by Wyatt Hunt), who’s about 8 or 9 years old and has an enthusiasm for using the Internet. Jack doesn’t really believe in Santa Claus, even though Jack’s Uncle Rick (played by Marc Evan Jackson) tells Jack that Santa Claus really exists. It’s mentioned that Rick is a father figure in Jack’s life because Jack’s biological father abandoned Jack and Jack’s mother.

Thirty years later, Jack (played by Chris Evans) is a bounty hunter and an elusive hacker on the Dark Web, where he has the nickname The Wolf. Jack is a freewheeling bachelor with commitment issues. It’s one of the main reasons why he’s been a flaky and frequently absentee father to his son Dylan (played by Wesley Kimmel), who’s about 13 or 14 years old.

Dylan lives with his mother Olivia (played by Mary Elizabeth Ellis), a medical doctor who is currently married to a husband who is not named or seen in the movie. It’s implied that Jack and Olivia were never married, never lived together, and never even had a committed relationship, but they decided to co-parent Dylan. So far, self-absorbed Jack has been failing miserably at being a responsible parent.

Meanwhile, Santa Claus (played by J.K. Simmons), also known as Nicholas or Nick, has been dutifully making an appearance at a shopping mall to meet children who tell him what they want for Christmas. This Santa Claus is not a traditional jolly and plump Santa. The Santa in “Red One” lifts weights for physical workouts and has an attitude of a cynically wise grandfather who knows what he has to say to make kids happy, even if he really doesn’t mean it.

Santa Claus’ security chief is Callum “Cal” Drift (played by Dwayne Johnson), a muscular and stern protector who has been working with Santa Claus for the last 542 years. (Johnson is also one of the producers of “Red One.”) Callum has recently given his resignation to Santa Claus because Callum believes that things have gotten worse in the world and there are more naughty people than nice people. Callum says he can also no longer see the inner children in adults. Christmas no longer makes him happy but has made him sad for this reason.

This is the type of abysmal dialogue that’s in “Red One.” In a scene where Callum and Santa discuss Callum’s impending exit from the job, Santa Claus says about the world’s people: “They need us now more than ever.” Callum responds: “You need someone younger.”

Santa comments, “We don’t need to change them. They need to change themselves. We work for the kids, Cal—even when they’re not kids anymore.” Santa adds, “Let’s have a cookie.” Callum replies, “The answer to everything.”

Santa is obviously disappointed that he is losing Callum, but Callum has made up his mind that he wants to retire from this line of work. Callum works for the Mythological Oversight and Restoration Authority (MORA), a secretive security corporation where he reports to Zoe Harlow (played by Lucy Liu), a no-nonsense supervisor. MORA looks out for mythological beings and protects them at all costs. Santa Claus’ code name with MORA is Red One.

Jack was hired by an anonymous entity to hack into a computer system. Unbeknownst to Jack, this hacking exposed the secret location of Santa Claus on the North Pole to the entity that hired Jack. Santa Claus is then kidnapped from his home on the North Pole. MORA finds out that Jack was indirectly responsible for this kidnapping, so Callum is dispatched to force Jack to help Callum find Santa Claus.

If you’re already rolling your eyes at the description of this plot, “Red One” gets even worse as it goes along. Other characters who are part of the story are Krampus (played by Kristofer Hivju), the horned mythological creature who punishes naughty children; a Christmas witch named Gryla (played by Kiernan Shipka); and a sleazy business jerk named Ted (played by Nick Kroll), who is tracked down by Jack and Callum on a Hawaiian beach. It’s all just an excuse for “Red One” to be filmed partially in Hawaii, where the movie filmed on the island of Oahu.

In “Red One,” Krampus is supposed to be Santa’s brother, with no explanation for why human Santa and non-human Krampus could be related. Krampus is also an ex-lover of Gryla, who is described as a “900-year-old ogre with 13 sons who work at her command.” The scenes with Krampus are some of the worst in this already bad movie, which didn’t need the Krampus character at all.

The visual effects in “Red One” also include life-sized villain snowmen that are about as exciting as watching snow melt. There’s a North Pole security team called ELF (an acronym for enforcement, logistics and fortification) that includes a talking polar bear named Agent Garcia (voiced by Reinaldo Faberlle), another character that didn’t need to be in this movie. There are also humanoid robots that show up with no real explanation of their origin. And, of course, there are Santa’s reindeer, who have no names and no personalities.

Jack and Callum go through the usual formulaic motions of two characters with opposite personalities who must learn to work together for a common goal. The expected bickering and wisecracking banter ensue. And almost all of it in “Red One” fails to be funny or entertaining. Johnson and Evans have played these types of roles in many other movies. There’s nothing new to see here in their mediocre performances in “Red One.”

Except for Gryla, female characters in “Red One” are merely sidelined observers of most of the action. “Red One” mainly has Mrs. Claus (played by Bonnie Hunt) in a small role as the worried wife at home who bakes cookies. Hunt’s considerable comedic talent is wasted in this movie, which relegates her to a shallow and almost useless role. Zoe is Callum’s boss, but Callum gets to make the biggest and boldest moves. Shipka looks like she’s having fun playing a villain, but this villain’s personality is restricted to being one-dimensional stereotype.

“Red One” tries to juggle many different subplots like a juggler who ends up dropping too many things thrown in the air. There might be enough in “Red One” to satisfy viewers looking for some fantasy genre visual effects, but the movie’s main characters and story are extremely derivative and fail to be interesting. “Red One” is just an unimaginative mush of ideas using the same formula as comedic movies about buddy cops with clashing personalities. “Red One” is also a shameless showcase of what people dislike the most about the crass commercialism of Christmas.

Amazon MGM Studios will release “Red One” in U.S. cinemas on November 15, 2024. A sneak preview of the movie was shown in U.S. cinemas on November 10, 2024. Prime Video will premiere the movie on December 12, 2024.

Review: ‘The Hater’ (2022), starring Joey Ally, Bruce Dern, Meredith Hagner, Ian Harding, Ali Larter and Nora Dunn

March 25, 2022

by Carla Hay

Pictured in front, from left to right: Nora Dunn (second from left), Joey Ally, Meredith Hagner, Bruce Dern and D’Angelo Lacy in “The Hater” (Photo by Elizabeth Kitchens/Vertical Entertainment)

“The Hater” (2022)

Directed by Joey Ally

Culture Representation: Taking place in the fictional city of Alabaster, Texas, in 2020, the comedy/drama film “The Hater” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans and Asians) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: A progressive liberal Democratic campaign worker goes back to her politically conservative Texas hometown and poses as a conservative Republican in a state representative primary election, in order to defeat a politician who bullied her when they were children. 

Culture Audience: “The Hater” will appeal primarily to people interested in political dramedies and who have a high tolerance for watching abrasive personalities.

Ian Harding in “The Hater” (Photo courtesy of Vertical Entertainment)

Once you get past all the obnoxious ranting by the movie’s main character, “The Hater” is a comedy/drama that has as much to say about political and cultural wars in America as it does about family, female empowerment and the grieving process. It’s not a film that everyone is going to like, simply because the protagonist is a loud, aggressive and unapologetically liberal “social justice warrior.” However, “The Hater” is not a movie that completely bashes political conservatives, who are presented not as a monolith but as people who have beliefs that vary within conservative ideology. The movie has some sly commentary about political campaigns and how candidates of any political leaning are capable of giving in to corruption.

Joey Ally is the star of “The Hater,” which is her feature-film debut as a writer/director. In the movie, she plays Dorothy Goodwin, a political junkie who has been obsessed with politics since she was a child growing up in the fictional city of Alabaster, Texas. The movie opens with a flashback to Dorothy at about 11 or 12 years old (played by Elizabeth Kankiewicz) giving a campaign speech to an assembled group of students in her bid to run for class president. She earnestly talks about civic-minded duties, and she quotes Thomas Jefferson. The students seem bored or downright hostile to Dorothy’s speech.

Dorothy’s opponent is rich kid Brent Hart (played by Wesley Kimmel), who shouts: “I want to be class president so we can have [French] fries all day, every day!” The crowd cheers, while Dorothy is shown looking dismayed at the side of the stage. Needless to say, Dorothy lost the election. And it’s later revealed through conversations in the movie that Brent bullied her when they were in school together.

“The Hater” then flash forwards to the year 2020, with Dorothy as an adult in her late 20s or early 30s. She’s a speech writer for a Democratic political candidate named Scott Park (played by Rob Yang), who has to bail her out of jail because she’s been arrested during an environmental protest where she and other protestors wore pig masks and chanted, “Trees not greed!” The video of her arrest went viral, and Scott isn’t pleased about how her arrest will affect his political campaign. Scott hints that he wants to fire Dorothy, but before he goes through with it, Dorothy decides to quit.

Feeling adrift and rejected, Dorothy decides to fly back to her hometown of Alabaster and stay at the house that she co-owns with her widowed paternal grandfather Frank Goodwin (played by Bruce Dern), who lives alone at the house. Frank is a curmudgeonly political conservative who regularly watches Fox News. Dorothy inherited the house from her late father Theodore “Ted” Goodwin, who raised her as a single parent. Dorothy’s mother is never seen or mentioned in the movie.

Frank is the type of person who uses sarcasm to express himself. When Dorothy shows up unannounced at the door, Frank pretends to disapprove of Dorothy’s nose ring and slams the door in her face. Just as Dorothy is about to remove the nose ring, Frank opens the door and chuckles that he was just messing with Dorothy, whom he hasn’t seen in about a year.

“I didn’t know if you were even alive,” Frank tells Dorothy. “I never thought I’d see you again.” Dorothy says about Frank’s remark: “It’s a little dramatic. I was home last year for your birthday.” Dorothy is a Democrat who works on political campaigns, but she also shows signs that she distrusts the government. She lectures Frank about not leaving “digital thumbprints” because of “all the data the government is collecting” on people.

It’s never really said outright, but observant viewers will figure out that Dorothy left her hometown behind and cut off contact with a lot of people she knows there because of too many bad memories for her. Not only was she bullied in school, but she’s also emotionally wounded by the death of her father, who was a schoolteacher who taught theater classes. Dorothy and Ted were very close. His cause of death is not mentioned in the movie, but it happened when she was a child. It’s implied that he was the one who influenced her to become politically liberal in a place that is mostly politically conservative.

“The Hater” makes several references to the fact that the movie is taking place in 2020. Without mentioning his name, Dorothy is extremely upset with who is president of the United States. There are mentions of the COVID-19 pandemic and the lockdowns that happened as a result. People aren’t wearing a lot of face masks because Texas is a state well-known for having a large population of people who are against wearing face masks during the pandemic and who protest against any government-ordered pandemic lockdowns.

Unemployed and looking for work on a political campaign, Dorothy doesn’t have much luck finding any paying jobs, so she reluctantly decides to become a campaign volunteer for a Democrat running to be a state congressional representative. Her name is Sally Jensen (played by Melora Walters), who has run for this political office before but has always lost. However, Dorothy nixes those volunteer plans when she finds out that her former school nemesis Brent Hart (played by Ian Harding) is Sally’s Republican opponent in the primary election. Dorothy comes up with a plan to ensure Sally’s victory.

Dorothy remembers a loophole in Texas state law that says that if a candidate wins a primary election, and then drops out of the general election, there can be no other candidate from the candidate’s political party to be in the general election. Because American political elections usually come down to Democrats vs. Republicans (in terms of who gets the most votes), Dorothy decides she’s going to pretend to be a conservative Republican, run against Brent with the hope of winning the primary election, and if she wins, she’ll drop out of the general election, making it easy for Sally to win.

It’s a long-shot gamble, but Dorothy is willing to take it, if only to get some revenge on Brent. Even though Dorothy is a hardcore liberal Democrat, she’s still registered as a Republican voter in Texas. There’s some vague mention that she was a registered Republican in her youth before she changed her political opinions, but Dorothy never changed her Republican party registration in Texas. The house that she owns in Alabaster (in Paula County) is enough for Dorothy to establish the residency she needs to be an eligible candidate. The movie never says how long Dorothy has lived out of the area, so no one comes forward to challenge her Texas residency.

During her hometown visit, Dorothy reconnects with a former school acquaintance named Greta Hoffman (played by Meredith Hagner), who is happy to see Dorothy, but the feeling isn’t mutual. Greta is friendly, but Dorothy’s feelings about Greta are tainted by Dorothy’s memories of Greta being in their school’s “popular kids” clique that would shun outcasts such as Dorothy. Greta is now a married homemaker and mother of a daughter named Mae (played by Ruby June Arnold), a polite, bubbly child who is about 5 or 6 years old. Greta often feels lonely because her husband is a helicopter pilot for the U.S. Army, and he spends a lot of time away from home.

Dorothy treats Greta as someone who is intellectually inferior to Dorothy. When Dorothy declares her candidacy, the only people who know her secret about her true beliefs as a progressive liberal are her grandfather Frank and her openly gay best friend Glenn (played by D’Angelo Lacy), who is an aspiring singer who also works as a stylist. Glenn is very skeptical that Dorothy will win the election, but he flies out to Alabaster to visit Dorothy more than once to show his support.

Dorothy enlists the political backing from the leader of the local chamber of commerce women’s group. Her name is Genie (played by Nora Dunn), and she’s a right-wing conservative Republican. There’s also an ambitious TV reporter named Victoria Upson (played by Ali Larter), who becomes a big part of Dorothy’s campaign, especially after Dorothy accidentally becomes known as a gun-toting hero when Dorothy thwarts an armed robbery of a convenience store.

As for Brent, he and his hard-driving senator father Trent Hart (played by James L. Brewster) plan to demolish the Alabaster community center to make way for the Hart family’s car dealership. Dorothy is using the car dealership as leverage against Brent in the election to make him look like he and his family are greedy corporate types who want to tear down a place that benefits the community. Brent is being pushed into his election by his father Trent, who says at one point about Dorothy’s ability to get gain support and rise in the poll numbers: “We’ve got this MeToo shit stepping on our necks.”

“The Hater” has some comedic twists and turns that aren’t too far-fetched from what could happen in real life. Dorothy can be extremely off-putting and rude, even to people who agree with her political beliefs. But over time, Dorothy shows a very vulnerable side that makes her more relatable to people in her life, as well as viewers of this movie. All of the cast members give performances that are capably entertaining, but not outstanding. The ending of “The Hater” is a little too contrived and pat, but the movie is a mostly clever take on the political process and how much political candidates can choose to retain their humanity (or not) in brutally competitive elections.

Vertical Entertainment released “The Hater” in select U.S. cinemas, on digital and VOD on March 18, 2022.

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