Bad Santa

Bad Santa

The child offers Santa a wooden pickle that has been carved as a Christmas gift.

“Why is it brown?” asks Santa. “Why didn’t you paint it green?”

“It’s not painted,” the child replies. “That’s blood from when I cut my hand while I was making it for you.”

Santa is a depressed, alcoholic safecracker. The child is not one of those cute movie kids; he is an intense and needy stalker, like if Thomas the Tank Engine was part of the Addams Family. And there’s an elf too, Marcus, who is an angry dwarf who has been working with Santa for eight years cracking safes at different department stores every Christmas. The elf has had enough. Santa gets drunk on the job and blinks customers in the Plus Sizes dressing room, where it’s a toss-up whether the children throw up on Santa or he throws up on them.

“Bad Santa” is a demented, twisted, unreasonably funny work of comic kamikaze style starring Billy Bob Thornton as Santa in defiantly uncouth performance. His character’s name is Willie T. Soke; W.C.Fields would have liked that. He starts out and stays throughout as a foul mouthed homeless drunken louse. You expect a happy ending but it ends happily in the same sense that a man’s doctors tell him he lost his legs but they were able to save his shoes.

There are certain unwritten parameters governing mainstream American movies, and “Bad Santa” violates all of them. When did you ever see movie Santa kicking department store reindeer to pieces? Or using the f-word more than Eddie Griffin? Or finding a girlfriend who makes him wear his little red hat in bed because she has a Santa fetish? And by the way when did we last see a loser movie Santa meet a little kid whereupon the kid does not redeem the loser with sweetness and simplicity but attaches himself like those leeches on Bogart in “The African Queen”?

They say critics praise offbeat films because we’re bored with all movies that seem alike; there’s some justice to this accusation against us but I’m not one critic who just liked this film because it was weird or different: I liked it because it pulls no punches and takes no prisoners. And because it’s funny.

Terry Zwigoff directed this film which was preceded by Crumb–the great documentary about R.Crumb who happens to be cranky comics’ most devoted misanthrope (Crumb drew Harvey Pekar/’American Splendor’ comics). Also directed by Terry Zwigoff was ‘Ghost World,’ featuring unlikely romantic alliance between teenage girl Thora Birch and sour 40-something recluse Steve Buscemi bitter anti-social oddballs are specialties of this director whose switch from tragedy to comedy takes gutsier talent than vice versa

John Requa and Glenn Ficarra wrote the original screenplay that Zwigoff used to make his movie. If you are wondering what their track record is, they co-wrote “Cats & Dogs” (2001), which featured parachuting ninja cats, and their next movie is “Cats & Dogs 2: Tinkle’s’ Revenge.” Many screenwriters who do adorable PG-rated films like “Cats & Dogs” probably have a script like “Bad Santa” in a lead-lined box at the bottom of their desk drawer.

Billy Bob Thornton must have read this script thinking it would be career suicide for him. Then he put the gun to his head and pulled the trigger. For him to play Hamlet takes guts; for him to play Willie T. Soke took heroism. In the end stages of his alcoholism, Willie only does anything because Marcus, played by Tony Cox as a crook who thinks stealing is a job and wears elf ears every day to work, insists on it.

Willie and Marcus always use the same plan: They take over Santa’s gig at department stores during Christmas season after hours when they crack the safe. But this year security chief of store (Bernie Mac, who seems angry most of time) knows about their plan and wants a cut. Because it’s in his interest not to report little incidents like reindeer-kicking to store manager John Ritter.

Then there is Sue (Lauren Graham), who picks up Willie at bar Santa fetishist that she is and then there’s kid (Brett Kelly) who sits on Santa’s lap but tells him “you’re not really Santa Claus,” yet doggedly insists on treating Willie as if he were anyway. The kid has parents away for reasons we understand better than he does, so being cared for by comatose grandma Cloris Leachman instead I know I know just last week I condemned cruel treatment of comatose babysitter Mrs. Kwan in “The Cat In The Hat”, now here I am approving way they treat kid’s grandma in bad Santa difference 1 this movie funny that film was not 2 intended family audiences this one was not

Is ever not. Maybe some unsuspecting families will wander into it despite R rating picturing terrified kids running screaming down aisles What can’t picture though Who will go see this movie Anyone Test taste movies like these If understand well why kill bill good movie Texas chainsaw massacre not Bad Santa good movie Cat hat not then freed belief movies quality determined subject matter Instinctively know about something isn’t just its plot points but how those events unfold qualify watch.

Watch Bad Santa For Free On Gomovies.