I’ve made it a rule over the years to never read reviews of movies (or pretty much anything else) until I’ve had the change to watch them myself. If it’s something I have interest in, I’ve found that reading other folks’ views ahead of time has a way of skewing my enjoyment (or lack thereof) of the film that’s devouring a couple precious hours of my time. That may be an odd way to start a review, but I think it’s worth it here. In short, if you like The Rock and you want to see him in a Christmas movie, just go see it and make up your own mind. Which is exactly what Mrs. Deal & I did when we hit the good ol’ Skyline Drive In last Saturday night.
First of all, you may be questioning seeing a new movie at a drive in theater, especially in NOVEMBER. Trust me, it’s worth it, or at least it is at a GOOD drive in, which the Skyline definitely is. It’s just fun to sit in the car and watch a movie. It’s a different experience than being at a megaplex or even streaming on your couch. Hit the snack bar and grab some goodies then crank the audio through your car speakers or better yet, grab a boom box and just sit back and enjoy.
So let’s talk Red One, a holiday offering starring Chris Evans, JK Simmons, Lucy Liu, and your friend and mine, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. In the film, Rock is the humorless lead of Santa’s security team and he’s decided he’s had enough of the whole scene as people simply don’t have the Christmas spirit anymore.
I love Simmons, but he’s an odd choice to say the least for Santa, pumping iron like a madman to get ready for the big night each year. Last thing I need is a reminder of Santa with Muscles, which is all I could think of watching this Kris Kringle clanging and banging. Naturally Santa gets kidnapped so it’s up to the Rock to head out into the world and find the big guy before Christmas Eve.
Along the way, Rock runs into Chris Evans, a low life hacker who unknowingly helped the real bad guys get Santa. It’s fun to see Evans in a different role after all those runs as Captain America, but there’s not a second where you’re not thinking, “Ok, ok, we know he’s going to wind up with a heart of gold.” And if you didn’t think that, once the hackneyed ‘will he or won’t he show up to his son’s Christmas concert’ trope is wheeled out, there’s no doubt left.
We get some different stuff, such as other less-known Christmas characters making appearances. Have to admit, I wasn’t expecting Krampus when the opening credits rolled, so at least that was a surprise! And the lead villain was also quite a lot of fun. I won’t spoil who it is, but it made sense and wasn’t something I’d seen a hundred times before which is always a plus.
While I’ve seen this blasted as the worst movie ever (again, after I went and saw it myself), I definitely don’t share that view, like, at all. People saying things like that are just click-baity content churners or folks that haven’t experienced the level of pain I’ve put myself through all these years for your enjoyment. It was, like almost every Rock movie, fine. You’d think after all these years he’d make a movie better than “fine”, but realistically, we’re running out of time for Rock to make that classic like Schwarzenegger did with Terminator 2 or Stallone did with Rocky. Maybe he just doesn’t have that in him.
So yeah, it was, you know, alright. It didn’t boost my Christmas spirit or make me think, “I’m adding that to the annual December viewing list”, but if you go in with your brain turned off, eh, there’s worse ways to spend a couple hours. SPEAKING OF A COUPLE OF HOURS…that would be honestly my biggest issue with the movie. It’s just too long and drags on as a rule Christmas movies never need to be over, say, an hour-forty minutes tops. This one goes over two hours and there’s zero call for that.
I know it’s ‘bombing’, but realistically that has more to do with the gargantuan budget ($250 million!!!!!!!) than anything else. Watching this, I didn’t for one second see anything resembling a movie made for a QUARTER BILLION DOLLARS. I’ve seen folks lambast the CGI, but I didn’t notice anything too horrible. Then again, it was a slightly foggy night and my could have been cleaner windshield may have done the movie some favors.
All this to say – I don’t see me inducting this for a Christmas movie in the near future. But, a quick glance at the calendar says I DO need to start working on something for this year. Y’all got any ideas? Leave ’em in the comments section below!