Now on Prime Video: 'Red One' Proves It: Family Films Need a Strict Runtime Limit

Today, an entire generation of young people consume media primarily from TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. In my experience, even those with the ability to concentrate for “long” periods of time have an attention span equivalent to: one episode of Survivor, or an episode of Abbott Elementary plus High Potential. In other words, sixty to ninety minutes, tops —if they can sneak the occasional peek at their phone or wander off for bathroom or snack breaks during lulls.

Given the current media environment, there is no reason in the world to produce a family Christmas movie that’s over two hours long, especially one as thoroughly mediocre as Red One. It’s self-defeating: not only does it add potentially tens of millions of dollars to the production budget but it also alienates the very audience it’s designed to please.

If it’s Scorsese, Christopher Nolan, or Greta Gerwig, there’s an argument for a two-and-a-half or three-hour movie—these filmmakers create cinema that’s captivating and message-driven. But if a studio’s goal is simply to get butts in seats, shorter runtimes mean more showtimes and happier audiences who are more inclined to recommend the film to friends and family.

I took four kids to see Red One—ages 12 to 17—and they all left grumbling some variation of, “That was too long.” And they’re right. Even for adults with (slightly) longer attention spans, Red One is unnecessarily bloated, overstuffed with pointless, often sluggish action sequences that neither advance the plot nor develop the characters—and they’re not impressive enough to justify the extended runtime.

It’s also not a very good movie. But a movie doesn’t have to be good to be entertaining. While Dwayne Johnson is completely lifeless here—has he undergone the full Parks and Rec Chris Pratt to Jurassic World Chris Pratt transformation?—Chris Evans, with his signature eyebrow work, capably cracks wise on occasion. There are even some enjoyable sequences, notably one involving Krampus, that might have made the film worthwhile—if it weren’t for the exhausting runtime.

Briefly, here’s the mostly nonsensical plot: A jacked Santa Claus (played capably by J.K. Simmons) is kidnapped by a shapeshifting witch, Gryla (Kiernan Shipka), who plans to torture kids on the naughty list—a concept originally devised by her ex-boyfriend, Krampus. The absurdly named Callum Drift (Johnson), Santa’s bodyguard and right-hand man, is tasked with rescuing Santa before Christmas Eve. For reasons that don’t matter much, he recruits Jack O’Malley (Evans), a thief and lifelong naughty-lister, to aid in locating Santa. Jack also has his own issues—he’s a bad father estranged from his son—and ultimately uses the mission to not only rescue Santa but also salvage his relationship with his kid.

That’s a plot that should not take over two hours to tell. It’s unclear why any studio—here, Amazon, which reportedly shelled out an insane $250 million for the film—continues to let indulgent filmmakers (in this case, the otherwise reliable Jake Kasdan of Jumanji) test their target audience’s patience. Even the most media-savvy directors often mistake “more” for delivering on the “give the audience their money’s worth” mantra, forgetting that what audiences truly value is, not to be stuck in their seats, but to be entertained. A briskly-paced 100-minute Red One could’ve papered over its faults, but a runtime this long only exaggerates them.