The most important thing I can tell you about Jake Kasdan’s “Red One” is that yes, it’s a real film starring Dwayne Johnson and Chris Evans as a mismatched action movie odd couple rescuing a kidnapped Santa Claus, and not a “Saturday Night Live” parody. And it’s not nearly as awful as it sounds.
The film, which cost nearly $250 million to make, is an effectively constructed high-concept action-fantasy-comedy that waffles inconsistently between entertainingly imaginative and merely perfunctory. The world it builds — out of mythological creatures struggling to find their purpose in a world that no longer knows or cares they exist — is fun to think about, and rife with possibilities.