Dark Christmas
Bad Santa, dir. Terry Zwigoff.
When I was a kid I imagined the colourful boxes under the Christmas tree at the local shopping centre were full of wonderful gifts. But at about the same time I realised Santa was more commerce than kindly, I also came to realise the gifts were nothing more than empty banana boxes from the supermarket wrapped by the check-out chick in her lunch break. It was a big blow. But after seeing Bad Santa I’m inclined to reassess my empty banana box theory. Santa’s sack wasn’t bare, it just wasn’t G-Rated!
Bad Santa not only fills the boxes under the plastic shopping mall tree (with safe cracking tools and bottles of vodka), it wraps them with a great big MA 15+ gold bow, and writes Merry #*!^*# Christmas on the greeting card. Not to mention a bar maid with Santa suit fetishes who is as likely as not to nip out and bite.
Willie (Billy Bob Thornton), a pathetic career criminal, dons a Santa suit, for 30 days out of every year, to thieve from department store safes. The other 335 days he drinks the proceeds. His partner-in-crime, and the operational brains behind the scam, midget Marcus (Tony Cox), organises the gigs and enjoys a bit of five-finger-discount Christmas shopping on the side. The pair have enjoyed years of hassle free scamming, cruising between cities to spread their own special brand of Christmas cheer. That is until they hit Phoenix. In this town their stockings are packed with more punch than usual: a politically correct mall manager (John Ritter), a corrupt store Dick (Bernie Mac) and a snotty nosed fat kid (Brett Kelly) who still believes.
Black comedy doesn’t come much easier than this. Drunks in Santa suits, conniving midgets who pack 22s, mall mums and festive expletives make for easy laughs. Sacred cows (and reindeers) are slaughtered with scant regard for good taste.
Thornton is perfectly dishevelled, if a little too handsome, as the foul-mouthed Bad Santa. His drunken destruction of papier mâché reindeers is hilariously violent and wonderfully unsuitable, not to mention his beating up skinny teenage bullies in the mid-afternoon sun. John Ritter (in his last film role) plays eggnog to Thornton’s straight scotch, lending PC store manager, Bob Chipeska, just the right mix of nervous conscience and plain ridiculousness. In fact there are no bad performances in this little Christmas slap in the face—all tested