Bad Santa 2 (2016) * *

Directed by:  Mark Waters

Starring:  Billy Bob Thornton, Kathy Bates, Tony Cox, Brett Kelly, Christina Hendricks

Bad Santa 2 tries to follow in its predecessor's footsteps, but it knows the words and not the music.    Bad Santa (2003) walked a perilous tightrope between bad taste and worse taste.    It was slyly vulgar.    It got big laughs from the natural impropriety of its characters.     They were louses and couldn't help but be louses.     I gave the original Bad Santa three and a half stars, but its mostly unnecessary sequel not so much.

Pretty much everything that needed to be said about Willie Soke (Thornton), the alcoholic safecracker who dressed as Santa to case establishments at Christmas time and rob them, was said in the original film.    The sequel tries to force us to sympathize with him.    Yes, he is an alcoholic lout, but gosh darn it, somewhere inside him is a good heart.    This will not do.   The opening voiceover narration consists of Willie confessing to us about what a jerk he is and how much people don't like him.     The original film made no excuses for Willie.    It saw him for what he was.   There wasn't any back story or the appearance of his neglectful mother (Bates), who brings him aboard along with Willie's erstwhile partner, Marcus (Cox), for a potentially lucrative pay day robbing a Chicago charity on Christmas Eve.

Bad Santa 2 still managed to work in a few energetic laughs in the opening minutes.    I had hope that Bad Santa 2 would be at least a serviceable sequel, even if I knew going in it would not match the original film.    But my hope was fleeting and soon the laughs dried up.    Sure, there are plenty of vulgarities, swear words, and insults thrown around, but the spirit is gone.    The snot-nosed (literally) kid from the original film who takes a liking to Willie also shows up.    Thurman Merman (Kelly) doesn't have snot running down his nose anymore, but wears his hoagie shop work uniform everywhere he goes.     He still incessantly asks questions, but he is guileless and unworldly.    Willie kind of likes the young man, while Thurman hero worships Willie.     Bad Santa 2 actually goes and gets gooey on us as Willie and Thurman become a family of sorts, a choice the first movie wisely avoided.

In the original film, Lauren Graham played a woman turned on by Willie in his Santa suit.    The sequel has a similar character in Diane (Hendricks), who wants to help Willie get sober and bang him at the same time.    It is not made clear if she is turned on by the whole Santa suit thing.    Doesn't really matter anyway.    Her character is mostly unnecessary.     Marcus also returns from the first film, even through his relationship with Willie ended very badly.    It is fun to see Marcus and Willie team up and express their mutual antagonism.     Kathy Bates somehow convincingly plays Willie's mother even though Bates is only seven years older than Thornton in real life.    She is tattooed, surly, and unsentimental.    We see where Willie got his pleasant disposition.

But the movie starts to feel like it wants to be crass and lovable at the same time, which is an ungainly fit.   It tries to paint a happy ending on material that doesn't cry out for it.    Worst of all, it commits the most egregious sin a comedy could commit:  It stops being funny.