Directed by: Terry Zwigoff
Starring: Billy Bob Thornton, Lauren Graham, Bernie Mac, John Ritter, Tony Cox, Cloris Leachman, Brett Kelly, Lauren Tom
It is a bit after Christmas, but Bad Santa is hardly a "Christmas" movie. Those expecting good cheer and joy have come to the wrong movie. The "bad Santa" of the title is an alcoholic safecracker who, along with his diminutive partner Marcus (Cox), works every holiday season as a department store Santa in order to case the place and rob it. The duo has done it eight years in a row at different stores around the country, but Marcus is tired of Willie (Thornton) showing up at work drunk, banging women in fitting room stalls, and being just plain unreliable. Marcus and Willie find themselves in the office of the mall manager (Ritter) more often than not explaining why Willie threw up on one of the kids. The two criminals also catch the eye of the mall security manager (Mac), who may not be as interested in stopping them as he is by enriching himself via blackmail.
Bad Santa is a funny movie. It does not mind being vulgar or crass. Willie is a drunken, selfish lout through and through. He befriends a young boy (Kelly) who we first see coming off the bus with snot running down his face. Their friendship is one of mutual convenience. The boy has a friend (of sorts) and Willie has a place to crash since the boy's father is away on business and is being cared for by a mostly comatose grandmother (Leachman).
Comedy is tricky. It is a very fine line between good and bad taste. Sometimes you laugh despite yourself. Bad Santa does that to me. When Marcus tells Willie, "You shouldn't be digging in your ass like that," or Willie promises a girl he's having sex with, "You won't be able to shit right for a month," I laughed. Crude? Yes. Rude? Most definitely. But, it's all in the delivery. What else would you expect two lowlifes like Willie and Marcus to say? Having them recite Shakespeare would seem a bit out of their league.
Willie does not undergo a change of heart, although he kinda likes the kid who relentlessly hurls questions at him. Bad Santa does not go soft and gooey at the end. The characters get what it is rightly coming to them, even Willie. A change of heart would not have been believable anyway. Thornton fearlessly goes all the way with Willie. It is rare to see him without a drink, bottle, or smoke in his hand. You would think he was homeless, which in a way he is. Cox gets some big laughs trying in vain to keep Willie focused and under control long enough to pull off the heist. But even he has his limits. This was also the final feature film of John Ritter, Thornton's co-star in Sling Blade and the TV show Hearts Afire. He puts up with Willie and Marcus out of fear of a lawsuit for wrongful termination of a "black midget and a middle aged white guy."
I enjoy comedies that find a way to stretch the boundaries of good taste and create laughs. Bad Santa enjoys being exactly what it is. It does not look for phony redemption or paint Willie as a crook with a heart of gold. Here's a guy who would drink the coal he puts in bad children's stockings if he could.
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