Director Jake Kasdan has previously had some success with the 2017/2019 reboots of the Jumanji franchise. These films managed to score good reviews and make tons of money. This week, he’s reteaming with Dwyane ‘The Rock’ Johnson on the Christmas action comedy Red One. I was surprised to find sneak previews for Red One in premium formats scheduled a week in advance of the film’s theatrical release. I was less than enamored with the marketing material for Red One, but figured it would be best to get this out of the way now, as October/November marks the beginning of awards season, and it’s typically a pretty busy time at the movies. Is Red One worth your time?

Callum (Johnson) works as a security detail for Saint Nicholas, aka Santa Claus (J.K. Simmons), and he’s one day away from retirement. He’s become embittered with the state of humanity. On the night before Christmas Eve, Santa is kidnapped. Jack O’Malley (Chris Evans), a down-on-his-luck hacker, stumbled upon the coordinates of the North Pole, which is protected by a forcefield from the rest of the world. Callum enlists Jack on a mission to find Saint Nick and save Christmas.

Red One is dumb. It’s big, expensive, ugly and dumb. But I feel like Kasdan and screenwriter Chris Morgan, of the Fast and Furious franchise, know exactly how dumb this is. It’s kind of funny initially to see these actors recite this ridiculous expository dialogue with straight faces. But the film is never sure enough of itself to delve into straight-up parody, and that’s the problem. We’ve got some really good actors here basically wasting their time in this CGI-heavy cluster of several ideas that could be fun on their own, but together, don’t amount to much of anything.

Dwyane ‘The Rock’ Johnson is giving the same performance in every movie these days, to the point where I’m just bored of him. But he’s making money and he seems like a nice enough guy who appears to be having fun, so whatever, I’ll let it go, because I know that’s all he’s capable of. But Chris Evans has been squandering every bit of goodwill his career has built up since leaving the Marvel Cinematic Universe. He was very good in Knives Out, and then seemingly decided to never make another good movie ever again. He’s made a string of either streaming movies or movies that should be streaming movies, that are pretty much abysmal. I’m hoping he can turn it around – he’s in upcoming films from Celine Song and Ethan Coen – but Red One is just another disappointing entry in the dumping ground that has become his post-Marvel career.

Lucy Liu, who has not aged a day in 25 years, costars as the director of mythical creatures, or some nonsense like that. She deserves credit for never breaking character, as she has to deliver some really stupid dialogue. We also have Bonnie Hunt as Mrs. Claus, and I can never forgive it when a film underuses Bonnie Hunt. Kiernan Shipka stars as a villainous witch, who has a nefarious plan to punish everyone on the ‘naughty list’. And when your film gives me Kiernan Shipka as a scenery-chewing, campy-as-all-hell witch, and she can’t even brighten up the mood around here, something has gone very wrong. J.K. Simmons seems to be having fun in his few scenes as Santa Claus though, even if he feels wildly miscast.

Red One is also just kind of painful to look at the entire way through. For a film that cost a reported $200-250 million to make, it sure looks like crap. From the computer-generated reindeer, to a slew of weird-looking non-human creatures spread throughout the film, it looks a CGI bucket of vomit for most of the runtime. I guess a significant portion of that budget probably went to securing these movie star level salaries, but it also feels like they forgot to give them anything to do.

Red One tries to bridge the gap between the action movie and the Christmas movie, but at over two hours long, it wears out its welcome long before we get to the holly-jolly of it all. Now that MGM is owned by Amazon, Red One will eventually be on Prime Video. No word if it will be there before Christmas Day, but I could see a family booting this up right before the holidays, and maybe having a little fun with it if it’s on in the background and no one is really paying attention to it. But as a theatrical offering that serves as counterprogramming in the thick of awards season, it’s kind of a waste of time. There’s more exciting stuff available to you at the multiplex right now. If Red One sounds like something you’d enjoy, I would wait to watch it at home.