Amazon plunked down $250 million on this Yuletide action-comedy, a diverting if busy attempt to update the Santa Claus legend for the Marvel generation. The head of North Pole security (Dwayne Johnson), centuries old and hoping to retire, teams up with a deadbeat dad/hacker (Chris Evans) after a surprisingly buff Santa (J.K. Simmons) gets kidnapped the day before Christmas Eve.

It’s another case of mismatched partners who must hunt down the Red One in a globe-trotting quest that involves a sleigh’s worth of villains — trolls, abominable snowmen, a gargoyle-faced Krampus (Kristofer Hivju, best known as the giant Tormund from Game of Thrones), and a shape-shifting witch (played by all-grown-up Mad Men alum Kiernan Shipka) who has a really interesting motive for seizing Mr. Claus: She wants to nab his naughty list and eliminate all the unrepentant baddies to make the world a truly happy place again. (Since we learn that non-Santa believers now outnumber the tried and true, her plot would have an even more devastating effect than Thanos’s in Avengers Infinity War.)

Of course, taking out the naughty would leave no room for the redemption arc of our heroes — particularly Evans’s Jack “The Wolf” O’Malley, a “level four naughty lister” and mercenary who unwittingly sold the secret to entering Santa’s hidden North Pole compound. And this cluttered movie is all about helping its characters to rediscover the spirit of Christmas between CG-heavy action set-pieces.

Jake Kasdan, who directed the last two Jumanji movies, has a knack for world-building and he tosses a sackful of thematic and genre elements into the mix like some overstuffed snow globe. But when the flakes settle, we’re left with a mostly satisfying holiday entertainment about embracing our inner child. Bonus points for Simmons’s turn as a gym-rat Santa who bulks up for an annual gift-giving marathon that he says burns a whopping 134 million calories. No wonder he fuels up on all those plates of carb-heavy cookies along his journey.

Read my review at AARP.