Red One review: Santa is just the Amazon boss with a big beard

Red One (12A, 123 mins) 

Rating:

Whatever might be the prize for the most preposterously early Christmas film of the year — an undercooked turkey, perhaps — it goes without hesitation to Red One. 

There are Bonfire Night fireworks still unlit, for heaven’s sake. So the first challenge is to overcome the absurdity of the release date; and the second is to endure a running time of over two hours. 

Regrettably, the film’s length exhausts its admittedly jolly premise: namely that the real Santa Claus is a caring, sharing tycoon with a security detail bigger than that of the President of the United States (at last, something genuinely topical).

Red One starts with an unappealing little boy called Jack O’Malley questioning how Santa can possibly exist.

Thirty years later, now played by Chris Evans, the boy has become a similarly unappealing grown-up. 

Not only is he an inattentive father to his only son, he also casually drops litter, that surefire sign of a modern-day scoundrel.

Moreover, Jack earns a living in a deeply unethical way. 

Nicknamed the ‘Wolf’, he can hack his way into any computer system on behalf of the highest bidder.

But the Wolf bites off more than he can chew when, unwittingly, he helps some baddies break into a hi-tech complex at the North Pole, where an army of elves and other minions support Santa (J.K. Simmons) in planning for Christmas.

The concept, not entirely original, is that Santa heads up a huge global packaging and delivery conglomerate. 

As befits a giant of industry, he has an impressive security operation, run by loyal, watchful Callum Drift (Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson).

So when Santa (codenamed ‘Red One’) is kidnapped just 24 hours before Christmas Eve, Drift and his team leap into action.

They believe the Wolf holds the key to Santa’s whereabouts, so they begin by capturing him, which in due course leads them to the real villain of the piece: an ancient shape-shifting witch manifest as a young woman (played by Kiernan Shipka, who has grown up some since she played little Sally Draper in the TV drama Mad Men). 

Throughout all this, director Jake Kasdan (whose credits include the enjoyable Jumanji films) deploys the usual CGI bells and whistles, while writer Chris Morgan squeezes every last bit of juice from the film’s one-note Santa joke, with acronyms flying around everywhere. 

ELF, for instance, stands for Enforcement, Logistics and Fortification.

Inevitably, there are also some strained efforts to inject the obligatory festive sentimentality into all of this, with Jack learning the error of his ways as an irresponsible parent, and Santa dropping Christmas-cracker aphorisms — ‘somewhere inside every lost grown-up is the kid they once were’ — at every opportunity.

All that said, Evans, Johnson and Simmons, apart from sounding collectively like a firm of provincial solicitors, are engaging performers. And Kasdan knows how to direct action sequences. 

So if you fancy a family outing to see a Christmas film you could probably do worse. If only it were actually Christmas.

Paddington In Peru (PG, 106 mins) 

Rating:

Paddington In Peru, while several whiskers less glorious than 2017’s sublime sequel Paddington 2, is a much better bet.

At 32 Windsor Gardens, Paddington (voiced by Ben Whishaw) receives a letter telling him that his beloved Aunt Lucy, resident at a Home for Retired Bears back in his native Peru, is ailing and wants him to visit.

Mrs Brown (Emily Mortimer ably replacing Sally Hawkins) suggests that the whole family might accompany him.

Mr Brown (Hugh Bonneville), who has been encouraged by his new boss at the insurance company to take more risks, agrees.

Naturally, shrewd old housekeeper Mrs Bird (Julie Walters) goes too.

Yet there is a shock waiting for them all in Peru. The retired bears’ home is run by nuns, whose suspiciously smiley Mother Superior (Olivia Colman) tells them that Aunt Lucy seems to have disappeared. Evidently she has ventured into the Amazon rainforest, in search of a mysterious place called El Dorado.

Confused, Paddington at first pictures a fast-food joint of the same name back in London. But soon he is on board, literally so, when a riverboat captain with an ulterior motive (Antonio Banderas in fine comic form) offers to take them upriver.

Some of the intrinsic charm of the first two Paddington films is lost by plucking our ursine hero away from London and his posse of neighbourhood friends such as Mr Gruber (Jim Broadbent), who make only a fleeting early appearance.

On the other paw, it’s a pleasure to spend time with Paddington in any setting, and this film, like the first two a slick blend of motion-capture, CGI and live action, contains plenty of delights.

The director is Dougal Wilson, who is making his feature-film debut. But he did direct several of those celebrated John Lewis Christmas ads, which might be why the producers entrusted him with another revered British institution: the loveable Peruvian bear with the hard stare.

Midas Man (12, 112 mins) 

Rating:

Beatles manager Brian Epstein has been portrayed many times on screen, but never, as far as I’m aware, as a central protagonist. It’s about time. 

Midas Man leads us through Epstein’s tragically abbreviated life: he seemed so much older and more sophisticated than the acts he steered that it’s always shocking to be reminded he only made it to 32.

In Joe Stephenson’s film, nicely scripted by Brigit Grant, Epstein is sensitively played by Jacob Fortune-Lloyd, while a top-notchsupporting cast includes Eddie Marsan and Emily Watson as his parents, the distant Harry and loving Queenie, who could see how tormented he was by his homosexuality.

It was a proper coup, too, to get Jay Leno to deliver a cameo as another legendary TV show host, Ed Sullivan, while the up-and-coming Darci Shaw is terrific as The Cavern’s one-time cloakroom attendant, Cilla Black.

Bird (15, 119 mins) 

Rating:

I admired Bird , a quirky but absorbing foray into magical realism from Andrea Arnold. 

Newcomer Nykiya Adams, for whom Arnold rewrote the script, is sensational as Bailey, constantly let down by her feckless father Bug (Barry Keoghan). 

But she forges the most unlikely friendship with an oddball loner (Franz Rogowski), who proves to be her guardian angel in the most unexpected way.