Believe it or not, The Rock’s new holiday-themed action-comedy Red One from Amazon MGM — which is in theaters now and coming to Prime Video soon — is the first major studio holiday release in years. Not that viewers necessarily rewarded it as such.
Red One, in which The Rock plays the bodyguard of Santa Claus (J.K. Simmons), pulled in $34.1 million over its debut weekend. Against a production budget of more than $200 million, that sure sounds like a flop. Furthermore, the film from director Jake Kasdan is actually shaping up to be one of the most divisive releases of the year based on the reactions from critics and viewers.
If you ask me, the Red One trailer (below) looks comparable to something like a dumb SNL sketch — in other words, the kind of feature film that critics have no trouble ripping apart and that Reddit threads love to dunk on. Fittingly, the movie has an abysmal 33% critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes as of this writing, with the site’s critics’ consensus opining: “Wrapped in slick packaging but wholly lacking in holiday magic, Red One is a ho-ho-hum action-adventure.” However, as we all know, critics don’t get the last word on these things.
Despite the professional reviewer class insisting that it’s a misfire, Red One has actually earned a very strong 90% audience score as of this writing (based on more than 1,000 verified ratings). A testament, perhaps, to why The Rock remains one of the highest-paid actors in Hollywood — filmgoers love the guy. “Don’t fall for the hate,” one recent Rotten Tomatoes audience rater raves. “This movie is wholesome and fun all the way through!”
“Red One,” by the way, is the code name in the movie for Simmons’ Santa Claus. The Rock plays the North Pole’s head of security, who teams up with an infamous bounty hunter (Chris Evans) in a “a globe-trotting, action-packed mission to save Christmas.” In a promotional interview with Amazon MGM, producer Hiram Garcia adds: “I’ve always had this dream of making a kick-ass Christmas movie.
“It sounds crazy, but it’s something I’ve always wanted to do. Try and tell an action-packed Christmas story with heart and humor while also approaching holiday mythology in a realistic way. And then one day, I had an idea about how we could do it.”
