Metro Pulse/Movie Guru/Bad Santa

Movie Guru Rating:

Enlightening (4 out of 5)

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Bad Santa gives holiday tradition the finger

by Joey Cody

Bah.

This season can be so nauseatingly saccharine and overwhelmingly mercantile. With crass morons putting up X-mas decorations before Halloween, sappy ABC movies, and demented consumers lining up at Toys "R" Us at 4 a.m. (Hurry! Because all that crap might be gone by 9 a.m.!), I wish Congress would declare the holiday unconstitutional once and for all. But you know the Federal Reserve (a.k.a. Proffitt's) would never allow it. Makes me want to shove a Douglas Fir up someone's arse.

So it does my heart good to see a bitter, blitzed, bloated Santa Claus pissing himself, verbally abusing bratty kids, and cursing the whole damn debacle. And you can't get a better (or badder) Santa than Billy Bob Thornton in Bad Santa.

Willie (Billy Bob) is a Total Loser. You know, the guy who cheats at poker, screws your wife, drives a loud-ass POS, makes toddlers cry, and can't make it to work with a blood alcohol content lower than .38. Willie is kind of an amalgam of Thornton's characters from Monster's Ball and Pushing Tin—a boneheaded drunk, but very self-aware . . . and very lusty (he has a particular penchant for boning ladies in the plus-size department).

For one month each year, Willie works with Marcus (Tony Cox, whose best role—unfortunately—may be "African-American Leprechaun" in Leprechaun 2), casing a department store by acting as Santa & Elf. Then, on X-mas Eve, they rob the store blind and take the rest of the year off before targeting a new town and store the following X-mas. (Make you think twice about plopping your little girl on a stranger's lap?)

Willie's slovenliness and horniness try Marcus' patience to no end, and the little man constantly berates him for his "unprofessionalism." (Their shoddy North Pole performances are protected by threats of reporting "unfair practices"—i.e., firing a Black Little Person.) The fact that even his partner in crime for all these years has begun to despise him drives him ever closer to suicide.

Until...you guessed it: Willie meets a child who, at first glance, is as big a loser as he is. The boy, Thurman, actually believes Willie is Santa, and clings to him as only a fat, lonely latchkey kid can. Thurman's mom is in a cult somewhere, and his well-off dad is away "exploring mountains." A semi-senile, clueless granny (Cloris Leachman) is looking after Thurman, so Willie decides to crash at his posh house until the latest job is done. But Willie didn't count on the myriad ways Thurman pesters him with, well, kid questions ("Where are your reindeer?" "What are their names?"), and how he needs and wants Santa's attentions, meager though they are.

This sweet, quiet, bullied boy eventually wears Willie down, and they share some surprisingly touching moments that are neither disingenuous nor manipulative. But it's when things go haywire with the latest heist and Willie tries to do One Thing Right that the good intentions of Christmas present are waylaid by the crimes of Christmas past.

Director Terry Zwigoff (Crumb, Ghost World) manages to put the holidays in perspective with this darkly comic tale of redemption, but without being preachy—this is no About a Boy, It's a Wonderful Life, or even A Christmas Carol; it's the brainchild of producers Joel and Ethan Coen, after all. He has a gift for making you cringe at a pitiable character's initial grotesqueness, and then slowly peeling back the onion layers to show you the beautiful and intriguing nuances of that person. You're hooked. You fall in love with the loner, the dork, the loser. (Which is how it should be—I mean, imagine if our species' only breeders were quarterbacks and cheerleaders? Shudder.)

Some of Bad Santa's small—but bright—highlights are the late John Ritter as the ineffectual, milquetoast store manager; Lauren Tom as Marcus' prune-faced, grasping wife, Lois; Bernie Mac, as a security chief on the take; and Lauren Graham (Gilmore Girls), who plays a Jewish bartender with some daddy/Santy issues. Her cheerful copulatory chant of "fuckmesanta, fuckmesanta" will make your bells jingle.

But there are a few missteps: Thornton—for all his libidinous, potty-mouthed talents—comes off a tad forced here. (It's often hard to act convincingly drunk, even if you're actually soused.) And Cox, bless his heart, wouldn't be able to win a role in a dog food commercial if it weren't for his, er, specialness.

Despite these niggling faults, Bad Santa is a fantastic antidote for the spiritual indigestion of X-mas, the shot of rum in the eggnog of the season. (OK, OK, I'll stop with the yuletide metaphors.)

But I guarantee, after seeing Bad Santa, all you'll want in your stocking this year is a wooden pickle.