Gives Christmas a backstory it didn’t need

Here’s the bad joke from Hollywood Christmas movies. They tend to begin and end with a burst of old-fashioned jubilation. But it’s just a tease. In between, most of them make a point of straying as far from the Christmas spirit as possible. Instead, they trade in the new American spirit: vulgar, violent, full of fake fun and celebrating their own harshness. To trace the genesis of the anti-Christmas Christmas movie (“Jingle All the Way,” “Violent Night”), you’d probably have to go back to a few movies that are considered classics (though not by me): ” A Christmas Story” and “Home Alone”, both two glasses of eggnog laced with misanthropy.

That said, I’m not sure a Hollywood movie has ever kicked off the season with less genuine Christmas spirit than “Red One.” Yes, JK Simmons plays Santa (who gets abducted) and Simmons wins in his old wise innocence. Dwayne Johnson, as Santa’s bodyguard (who wants to retire because he has a crisis of faith), is his big amiable self. The strange thing about the film is that, while it’s a little bit tongue-in-cheek, it’s not really a comedy. Directed with charmless energy by Jake Kasdan, “Red One” is at once an action film; a kidnap-rescue thriller in which the doors of toy store supply closets are mysterious portals; and an exercise in Christmas world-building, as it were it is what has been missing from Christmas.

At the beginning, Simmons’ Santa sits on his throne and greets a line of children in a mall, a place he thinks is the most soulful place on earth (which shows you how far we’ve come from “Jingle All the Way” – even Santa now digs the capitalism of it all!). The hot toy of the season that the kids keep asking him for is a video game called Vampire Assassin 4. We’re supposed to laugh at how uncool it sounds. to is. But “Red One” could almost be the movie version of Vampire Assassin 4. It’s so busy and uneven, it overflows with cheesy digital effects that are generically derived from a piece of violent kitsch.

The film’s first not-quite-trying-to-be-funny “joke” is that the entire Santa Claus business is run as a US military operation. Santa’s code name is Red One. Johnson’s Cal works for ELF – which stands for Enforcement Logistics and Fortification, and means Cal scurries around like a secret agent barking orders into his wrist walkie-talkie. CF drones, Sno-Cats, a cargo plane: the film is light on tinsel but heavy on equipment. And the dialogue is tech-bombastic enough to sound like something out of a 1986 Dan Aykroyd comedy.

It is of course also a buddy movie. No, not Santa Claus and his bodyguard. (Once Santa has been kidnapped, which happens early on, he’s mostly out of the picture.) The friends here, who start to hate each other, are Cal, who has been tasked with tracking down Santa’s whereabouts, and Jack (Chris Evans), a degenerate sports gambler and abandoned divorced father who is also a kind of superhacker. Various forces from around the globe hire him through encrypted communication to reveal the hidden location of people and things, which he does with effortless flair.

It was Jack’s handiwork that revealed Santa’s exact location at the North Pole (under a dome, it’s a bit like the Christmas shop version of the Pentagon). And that’s what allowed Santa Claus to be kidnapped by Grýla, an old witch played by the always welcome Kiernan Shipka, who ever since “Mad Men” thought (and still thinks) would be a big star – and this film , in its blunderbuss way, shows why. Grýla is a standard nuanceless glowing nemesis, like something out of a “National Treasure” sequel. But the way Shipka plays her, there is a touch of her anger. Her bad dream? To punish everyone on Santa’s naughty list.

We meet Santa’s reindeer, which are interchangeable, oversized digital creations called “girls”. Why would reindeer be so tall? And why did they all have to be women? This is the kind of “whatever” conceit that tickles the “Red One.” Cal and Jack start in Aruba, just because. At the beach, Cal amusingly changes size during a fight, and the two must fend off an attack by ferocious snowmen. But it’s only one pit stop. They end up in Germany in a medieval “Star Wars” cantina trying to save themselves from Santa’s estranged half-brother, the giant goat-man troll Krampus (Kristofer Hivju), at which point you’re either on board or (in my case) starting to check out your watch.

The villains are shape-shifters, but the most important thing about “Red One” is that the entire film is a shape-shifter: laborious action jape, low-kitsch Christmas adventure, buddy movie, family reconciliation movie — every quadrant and demo must be served. In the cinema, Christmas is no longer a holiday, it is a concept that needs to be retrofitted. Do you hear those sleigh bells ringing? Come on, it’s nice weather for an over-the-top-of-the-North-Pole, through-the-supply-closet-portal, cargo-plane trip with you.