Red One (2024)

If you're going to be responsible for kidnapping Santa Claus (played here by J. K. Simmons) then you would probably hope to avoid being pursued by Dwayne Johnson and Chris Evans. Okay, wait, I know some people would dream of that scenario, but let's just say that no villain wants to be caught by powerful heroes, especially if they're trying to make up for decades of Santa's apparent leniency towards those who should be, or are, on the naughty list.

Johnson is Callum Drift, the head of security for Santa. Which makes it a terrible time for him when the big guy is kidnapped. Who would do such a despicable thing? Drift doesn't know, nor does Zoe (a capable higher-level boss, played by Lucy Liu), but there's one person who might be able to help. He's a lost cause though, a "naughty-lister" of the highest order who also happens to be very good at tracking people down. That's Jack O'Malley (Evans).

Written by Chris Morgan, who has taken some ideas from Hiram Garcia and sprinkled them with the kind of muscular moments that you'd expect from someone who has been in the writer's room for at least half a dozen Fast & Furious movies, Red One is loud and ridiculous in a way that may well cause some to love it, but didn't really work for me. There are one or two fun set-pieces (you'll know them already if you saw the trailer), but not enough to make this truly worth the runtime that clocks in at just over 2 hours. And it doesn't help that Johnson is armed with a gadget that allows him to pull some Ant-Man maneuvers. Very little of the humour works (especially in the earlier scenes), the action gets messier and harder to keep track of in the third act, and there's a general sense of being underwhelmed throughout the finale.

Director Jake Kasdan obviously found this premise appealing - some more Johnson silliness after their work together on the Jumanji movies, but with lots of seasonal trimmings - and I don't begrudge him giving it a try, but he seems to have been distracted by the idea of presenting a modern and cool new yuletide "classic" that he failed to spot the many weaknesses. Things don't flow well, the tone lacks a sweetness and innocence that the best Christmas films keep at their core, and the best bits don't necessarily feel as if they need to be grounded in a Christmas movie. 

Johnson plays the kind of character he always plays (tough and mean, but with a heart of gold), although he deserves some praise for being able to move around in this onscreen world in a way that makes him feel as if he does belong there. Evans has fun being someone with a much wobblier moral compass, but it's a fun inversion (another one) of his clean-cut image that is never fully committed to. Simmons is a surprisingly good, if also surprisingly muscular, Santa, Liu does perfectly well with her small role, Bonnie Hunt is a pleasant Mrs. Claus, and Kristofer Hivju is a lot of fun whenever his Krampus character appears. Other familiar faces include Mary Elizabeth Ellis, Nick Kroll, Marc Evan Jackson, and Kiernan Shipka, all doing just fine, and Wesley Kimmel is decent enough in the role of Dylan, the son of Jack O'Malley, and the one main child who ends up seeing some of the magical battle to return order to things in time for Christmas. I'll also mention the work from Reinaldo Faberlie as Agent Garcia, a large and intimidating polar bear. Overall, the cast isn't bad. I'm just not sure that the leads couldn't have been replaced by better choices, which could have then led to a screenplay being tweaked and improved to fit different personas.

I could sit through this again. I didn't hate it while it was playing. Nothing stands out though. It's the movie equivalent of the overdone musical Christmas tree. Bright, loud, somehow seeming to miss the point of the season while bathing the whole room in flashes of red, green, and gold light. But sometimes you can still look at it and enjoy the temporary distraction.

5/10

If you have enjoyed this, or any other, review on the blog then do consider the following ways to show your appreciation. A subscription/follow costs nothing, and ALL of the links you need are here - https://linktr.ee/raidersofthepodcast
Or you may have a couple of quid to throw at me, in Ko-fi form - https://ko-fi.com/kevinmatthews
Or Amazon is nice at this time of year - https://www.amazon.co.uk/hz/wishlist/ls/Y1ZUCB13HLJD?ref_=wl_share

Licorice Pizza (2021)

I am usually an easy mark for Paul Thomas Anderson movies. He makes amazing movies that I tend to love, thanks to his technique often being accompanied by great performances from the people he casts in main roles. Licorice Pizza still has his technique on display, but the strangely unsatisfying script isn’t helped by young leads who aren’t up to the usual high standard of acting seen in other Anderson works. Also, to be flippant, this feels like a Richard Linklater film directed by a stand-in.

Cooper Hoffman plays Gary, a child actor who is struggling to find the right roles now he is an older teen. He can no longer get away with the cheeky antics he used to, he can no longer get by on cute and adorable, but he cannot just go back to a normal life. So he spends his time being an entrepreneurial businessman, looking to profit from whatever the latest fad might be, from water beds to videogames and pinball. Gary also, from the very start of the film, falls for the older Alana (played by Alana Haim). In her mid-20s, Alana scoffs at the idea of a relationship with Gary, but he’s certainly interesting and charismatic enough to make her interested in his life. And so begins a friendship that may or may not develop into something more.

Part period piece, part ode to the bittersweet intensity of that first BIG crush, Licorice Pizza isn’t a film to dismiss. I don’t think I would ever say that about any film from Anderson. It is, however, his least interesting and least successful work to date (in terms of translating ideas from script to screen). 

Taking on his usual writer-director role, Anderson can at least be thankful for the talented people he works with. The production design here is wonderful, as expected. The wardrobe and make up departments do equally good work. The biggest problems here stem from the script and the casting.

Hoffman is great in his role, giving a performance that shows him as an actor who could easily follow in the daunting footsteps of his late father. Haim isn’t so good. I am not sure how much of that is down to her and how much of that is down to the script, with that age gap making things inherently a bit odd and icky, so I won’t spend too much time complaining about her. Bradley Cooper and Sean Penn, on the other hand, can both take some extra criticism. They clearly saw that they could have some fun with their roles, but both of them quickly teeter too far over into performances that are too silly. This may have been in service to the material, but neither of their performances fit well in a movie that otherwise wrings humour from a nice selection of references, time stamps, and winks to viewers, although let’s just not mention the scenes featuring John Michael Higgins. Mainly because I cannot decide on whether they are awful or amazing. The other person worth mentioning is Mary Elizabeth Ellis, very good in her small amount of screentime as the mother of Gary.

I have seen a lot of love for this, and some fans of Anderson rank it just as highly as some of his other works (and, in my view, he has delivered more than one cinematic masterpiece already, with a number of other movies from him coming very close to that status). It just didn’t work for me.  Many of the performances worked against the better elements, and the better elements felt like moments I could find in other, more enjoyable, movies. This isn’t one I think I will ever want to revisit, which is the first time I have said that about any Paul Thomas Anderson movie.

5/10

If you have enjoyed this, or any other, review on the blog then do consider the following ways to show your appreciation. A subscription/follow costs nothing.
It also costs nothing to like/subscribe to the YouTube channel attached to the podcast I am part of - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCErkxBO0xds5qd_rhjFgDmA
Or you may have a couple of quid to throw at me, in Ko-fi form - https://ko-fi.com/kevinmatthews
Or Amazon is nice at this time of year - https://www.amazon.co.uk/hz/wishlist/ls/Y1ZUCB13HLJD?ref_=wl_share