Red One (#622)


Faced with a choice of movies I didn't want to see, such as Moana 2 and Venom: The Last Dance, I selected Red One, a Christmas story which I thought was an animated one.  Thankfully it was not animated and surprisingly, it wasn't as bad as I expected. RED ONE turned out to be an amalgam of many Christmas movies—a little bit of Dickens, a smidgen of How The Grinch Stole Christmas, and even had a vague resemblance to classics like Miracle on 34th Street and It's a Wonderful Life. In this modern day tale, Santa, known as Nick by his staff and associates and played by the wonderful but unrecognizable J.K. Simmons, is abducted just before Christmas, and it's up to his chief of security, Dwayne Johnson, to join forces with a non-believer to rescue him in time to deliver toys around the world. Santa's sleigh is super modern and sleek and the reindeer are huge and super powerful. Sure, it's silly and contrived but it held my attention for its just over 2 hour length. It was funny at times and featured language not suitable for kids, but these days obviously anything goes. Critics and audiences differed significantly. Only 30% of critics gave it a thumbs up compared with 91% of audiences.  

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