Christmas movies don't come much bigger than this, nor do they fall much bigger than this. Red One took a big swing this holiday season, but its cinema release left much to be desired – making its reincarnation on streaming a hopeful one.
The movie, which is explicitly Christmas-themed, featuring a ripped Santa Claus, reindeer, a Krampus and more, had a slightly bizarre cinema release date of early November in both the UK and US, which many people would argue is crucially too early in the year for a holiday movie. It sunk without a trace, but can now be streamed on Prime Video at no extra cost.
That might just be an ideal situation for anyone hoping to queue up a simple, entertaining family action movie over Christmas since it really does have more to offer than you might think. Critics might not have loved the movie when it arrived, giving it a heinous 30% score on Rotten Tomatoes, but audiences have disagreed loudly. They've slapped a sparkling 90% score on the film, making for one of the biggest critic-to-fan disagreements I've seen in a while.
You can see what people are enjoying, too, since Red One has some of the biggest stars in the world in its lineup. Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson is famously the highest-paid leading man on the planet, but Chris Evans can't be far behind. Lucy Liu and J K Simmons round things out impressively, too.
The question from Amazon's point of view will be whether the film's streaming release can push back some of the bad vibes around Red One's commercial performance, which seems to have been heading towards a big loss. It's certainly a big headliner around which Amazon can hang the holiday season, as it hopes to reign as the best streaming service going.
You can add it to your watchlist now if you're an Amazon Prime subscriber, and it might just be a perfect pick if you're looking for a crowd-pleasing action movie over Christmas and towards the New Year. Still, that big divide in reviews means you might want to brace yourself for a diversity of reactions once its credits roll.
