To everyone’s surprise, Red One has just arrived here on the sly on Prime Video, where it was announced with great fanfare in American theaters a few weeks ago. So what happened between the two? The answer is simple: a budget of 300 million dollars for a box office having won barely half. The movie is one of the biggest failures of the year and one of its star’s biggest failures.
Beyond our masochistic curiosity pushing us to judge based on evidence whether this Christmas action comedy deserves to be in the list of “ not wise » from Santa Claus, another question remains. With 30% positive press opinions compared to 90% among spectators, Red One will it be new proof of the divorce between critics and the public? Does the sympathy capital of Dwayne Johnson is much less scratched than we suppose? Are we just piss-takers incapable of enjoying action entertainment with a polar bear playing better than The Rock ?
Because as it is and omitting the pans that it drags around, the footage still has enough to assert its rights. We are still talking about a film where Santa Claus, code name “Red” (JK Simmons), is kidnapped before the eyes of Callum Drift (Dwayne Johnson), his head of security, just before the holidays. To save Christmas, Drift will call on Jack O’Malley (Chris Evans), the best bounty hunter in the world. Together, they will have to travel the world to find the person responsible and rescue Rouge. Add to that a good bunch of creatures like bad snowmen and Lucy Liu, we felt obliged to discover the masterpiece.
Little daddy fight
It is easy to understand what can do the charm of Red One. Under other circumstances, we would have even found the film great. It must be said that the concept of a world where Saint Nicholas exists, like many mythological creatures such as Jack O’Lantern, and that he is escorted by fighter planes, is exciting to explore. Just for his potentially dwarven. A potential that the film is never afraid to exploit, as during a first sequence of jokes with Dwayne Johnson having fun shrinking. It’s horribly ugly, completely ridiculousbut once we Buy into the delusion, we have already seen worse with much worse intentions.
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Red One will provoke in us a little feeling of tenderness and amusement, because no matter what happens in the next sequence, we know that it will be written with the feet, played like feet, filmed like… you know the rest, but that it is done with the frank confidence of someone who believes in the politics of damn for damn. In a nutshell, yes, the feature film has all the cards in hand to be entertainment worthy of its stupidity, but a likeable stupidity.
We will add that it is in his failures that Red One is only more pleasantsince it embraces a category dear to our hearts: the stupid, but not mean, blockbuster that we like to make fun of. Because in another context, it would actually be suicidal to sign a work composed of 90% digital effectsbut to only treat 10% of them. It would be suicidal to copy so strongly the Red Notice with Dwayne Johnson playing the elite agent and Chris Evans replacing Ryan Reynolds as the talkative, joker crook. It would be suicidal to write nonsense like “ it smells like pine » or « we have to pull the carrot from them “. Paradoxically, the highest quality of Red Oneis not trying to be good.
Little Daddy Concon
However, if we can appreciate the bad and salute the initiative of having taken on a certain nonsense, we will have more difficulty accepting that no one present on the set tried to convince us of the pleasure taken in the thing. Once again, we cannot blame the screenwriter Chris Morgan, father of Shazam 2 and the majority of Fast & Furiousto have signed a story in automatic copying which even takes up the clipesque aspect of Red Notice and the winter prison escape scene.
On the other hand, it is easier to knock on the director Jake Kasdan, although experienced with the different Jumanji, who seems to abandon the camera as soon as there is movement, as if he were panicking and no longer knew what or how to film. Unless filming an actor’s feet when he is thrown backwards has become the norm. Hollywood changes so quickly…
It’s easier to punch Dwayne Johnson, literally mono-expressive throughout except when he approaches a smile as fake as a politician. The rumors of his unprofessional behavior on set may well have been denied, but it is difficult not to see some truth in them as the colossus shows no desire on screen.
His partner does no better and struggles to justify his presence as much as that of his character who arrives halfway through the film. Chris Evans doesn’t believe in it so much that he often fails to situate himself in space as soon as he is confronted with a digital monster or a green screen. For an actor used to Marvel productions, this is a shame. Two examples not to follow for the young Kiernan Shipka, who is given the role of villain on duty when the poor thing absolutely does not have the build for it. However, this general casting failure to exist beyond their clichéd phrases uttered suggests that it is, perhaps, more of an absence of direction from the actors on the set.
Red One spends his time only doing things half-heartedly despite having substantial equipment at his disposal. So that he is never generous enough, never brilliantly stupid enough, never embodied enough, never crazy enough… He is never enough, because he constantly seems to shout that it is already too much for a production of which none seems want to get involved in the project. Except perhaps JK Simmons who has fun as much as he can. In the spirit of Christmas, we were ready to forgive many things Red Oneand even to laugh at the worst heartily. Too bad he doesn’t have any.
Red One is on Prime Video
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