10 Recent Critical Duds We All Saw Coming
7. Red One
Red One falls into the category of films that seem to have been written, directed, and produced by Chat GPT. Everything about it is generic to the point of parody, and the plot goes exactly the way you're expecting.
It's a buddy-cop comedy featuring two men on a mission to rescue a kidnapped Santa Claus in order to save Christmas. One is a weary authority figure who's doing one last job before he retires, having become disillusioned with Christmas, the other is a snarky criminal who reconciles with his family in the most forced way imaginable. If that sounds like so, so many other movies you've ever watched, that's because it is.
Red One is a film without an original bone in its body, and as for the casting? Dwayne Johnson and Chris Evans play the two leads, Lucy Liu plays an intelligence agency authority figure, and J.K. Simmons plays Santa Claus (a role he previously voiced in 2019's Klaus, no less!). These are formulaic casting choices beyond measure, yet another display of just how little creativity there is on display here.
The trailers correctly foreshadowed this being possibly the most made-by-committee movie 2024 had to offer, and also showed off the film's abominable CGI for good measure. That's probably why it bombed at the box office.