When Red One, also known as Santa Claus (J.K. Simmons) is kidnapped, his head of security must team up with a Level 4 Naughty Lister to save Christmas.

Commander of ELF security Callum Drift (Dwayne Johnson) is losing his faith in Christmas and has resigned from his post. But just one day before retirement Santa is taken and Christmas is at risk. So he teams up with hacker and general lowlife Jack O’Malley (Chris Evans) who unwittingly helped the perpetrator of the crime.

Our leading men are the perfect cliché Christmas film characters. Callum can of course rekindle his faith in the season. Whilst Jack can learn to be a better father and a nicer human being generally. Something that should not be too difficult given his opening scenes as both a child and adult see him ruining Christmas for a group of children and stealing candy from a baby.

There is a lot to like here in the world building of Red One. Mythological creatures and beings live alongside us without our knowledge and Lucy Liu heads up an organisation that helps police them. Santa’s beginnings in a small wooden shack have expanded into a gigantic large scale operation complete with military like security around him. In a way it reminded me a little of Guillermo Del Toro’s take on Hellboy where the B.P.R.D. work in the shadows protecting Earth from paranormal activities. Just with more presents and mistletoe.

Where Red One falters is in both its length and generic characters who lead the film. Callum Drift portrayed by Dwayne Johnson is as vanilla as a character played by “The Rock” can come. Johnson can absolutely deliver a crowd pleasing leading role but sometimes it can be on the bland side. This definitely hits that criteria. Chris Evans, on the other hand has been keen to play the bad guy since his departure as Captain America for Marvel. And Jack O’Malley is no different. His opening heist scene is actually pretty entertaining but from there on in we get to see him realise the error of his ways. Evans is definitely more entertaining than Johnson but together they really struggle to keep a film with a two hour running time afloat.

On the other hand the film’s secondary characters are much stronger. J.K. Simmons take on Santa is a lot of fun but by the nature of the plotline he is side lined for a great percentage of the running time. Whilst Kiernan Shipka’s and Kristofer Hivju’s mythological characters are the stand outs of the film and you will wish we spent more time with them.

Director Jake Kasdan has also given us the blockbusters Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle and Jumanji: The Next Level starring Dwayne Johnson in recent years. So it is clear he can manage big budget, high concept movies. The issue seems to be in whether he can maintain the interest beyond the high concept.

As far as family Christmas movies go this one is reasonably entertaining. But I could not wholeheartedly recommend it, nor see anyone returning to it each year to ring in the festive season.