Red One 4K (2024/Amazon/MGM/Warner 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray)/Santa Claus (1959/Mexico/MVD/VCI Blu-ray)

Picture: B- Sound: B-/C+ Extras: D/C+ Films: D/C

Now for two more feature film releases that prove why, whether on the big or small screen, Christmas movies very, very, rarely work...

Jake Kasdan's Red One 4K (2024) started as a mess of a Amazon+ project meant mostly for streaming, maybe a limited theatrical release, yet had a high budget. The strange story of Santa Claus (J.K Simmons collecting a paycheck) getting kidnapped because of bad security was bound to be odd and maybe bad. Now we can say it is one of the worst films of the year, of any holiday, of Christmas, of big budget productions and to call this a comedy is a real stretch. So how did Santa get kidnapped?

Simple. He was being guarded by an inept goof (Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson) wearing a badly made and highly overpriced new version of a 1980s jacket and whose mind was who knows elsewhere. Must be new at the job, unless Santa gets kidnapped yearly every season.

He is so bad, he needs to team up with a 'bounty hunter' (not someone looking for the famous paper towel brand, by the way) to assist in finding the title character (Santa's pathetic 'code name' here, though it could mean worse) who might be one of the worst at his job in cinema history (Chris Evans playing himself essentially; Boba Fett has nothing to worry about) and even together, I was honestly wondering if Santa would turn up dead and that 'Rock' would be the next Santa... Oooopppppsssss. No sequels or sequel ideas please!

Running over two hours long... really long, it us worse that a deadly fruit cake crossed with a giant lump of coal even the coal industry would agree with Greenpeace on banning and films like Santa Claus Conquers The Martians (reviewed elsewhere on this site a few times) and Santa Claus: The Movie suddenly play like extremely ambitious attempts at recreating A Charlie Brown Christmas or any version of Miracle On 34th Street. To say the slick heartlessness of this garbage is awful and antithetical to the Christmas Spirit is an understatement and they ran up a reported $250 Million budget for this? It was more like they were competing with all of The Hallmark Channel to desecrate the holidays for us all.

Lucy Liu shows up in her worst film since Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle, which this mess is even slightly worse than and that lost a bunch of money too. Bonnie Hunt also turns up to no avail with a bored-looking cast of unknowns and the screenplay is as horrid as everything else. The added money, like the original budget, is barely on the screen. Amazon added the MGM name on it at the last minute too, but this is one release even Leo The Lion would hibernate in winter (and year round for that matter) over to avoid. Louis B. Mayer is turning in his grave!

Add to that the extreme predictability and that the whole film seems like something the far superior Richard Donner cult classic Scrooged (1988) with Bill Murray was spoofing when Lee Majors showed up for the preview of 'The Night The Reindeer Died' with Lee Majors, a far superior action star, actor and personality versus the lead here. Though note that was a big joke 38 years before this got made and has better visual effects than we get here! That speaks volumes.

Issued only months after being in theaters, they have decided to issue it on disc now instead of next year's holiday season (not so lucky us) while even atheists and agnostics will find this extremely miserable. Guess Evans has given up on real acting and just wants to coast on his name for paychecks. A shame since he and Simmons can actually act. So for all who have not already suffered through this abomination, this is One to absolutely skip!

There are no extras, as this torture test was more than enough of a buh humbug for us all, though you can continue the torture with the Digital Movie Code that has been included for some strange reason.

Christmas has been around for a very long time of course, and Rene Cardona's Santa Claus (1959) from Mexico where the title legend has to battle Satan, ruined Christmas, 'new' technology, magic and more odd things all the way (literally) to outer space. Starting to gain its own cult traction, especially in the face of the even more bizarre wave of already noted Hallmark pseudo-Christmas telefilms, you can read more about the wild one-off this turned out to be at this link of our previous review of VCI's first Blu-ray edition of the film:

http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/12011/Santa+Claus:+Collector%E2%80%99s

Since, Red One, dozens of attempts to make another 'Christmas classic' just for the money, the mega-myth of 'the war on Christmas' and those horrific Hallmark atrocities, this really does play like 'the good old days' and in its own weird way, seems more ambitious and even sincere than ever. Even its cheap effects and low budget seem somewhat charming versus spending tens of millions of dollars on CGI digital visual effects that look older than this film upon arrival, like the one above. If you have not seen this one, you should try it out like you would Santa Claus Conquers The Martians (as noted above) just for kicks, something different and before too much media helped ruin the holiday, even for atheists!

Extras repeat the older edition and are as odd a mix.

Now for playback performance. The 2160p HEVC/H.265, 2.35 X 1, Dolby Vision/HDR (10; Ultra HD Premium)-enhanced Ultra High Definition image on Red One 4K definitely looks like its started as a cheaper streaming project, with color that can be off, more soft edges than expected (did they mix incompatible cameras too?) and a look that is one of the ugliest I have seen in a film, with everything looking super fake. That includes exteriors that are odd. Compositions are sloppy too. How do you mess all that up?

The lossless Dolby Atmos (Dolby TrueHD 7.1 mixdown for older systems) sound mix is also off with the sound a little underwhelming (suggesting higher fidelity was an afterthought after production began)

The 1080p 1.78 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on Santa Claus (1959) can show the age of the materials used, but the interesting color makes this all the weirder. The Spanish PCM 2.0 Mono and PCM 5.1 mix try to update the sound, but cannot hide the age of the theatrical monophonic sound. The English dub makes it all the weirder, so try them all out if you get this one. This looks and sounds like the previous transfer, which is not that bad. Wonder if they'll dare to do this on 4K disc at some point?

- Nicholas Sheffo