:: Bad Santa didn't work for me. The film is directed by Terry Zwigoff, who previously directed Crumb, and the brilliant Ghost World. Billy Bob Thornton is a small-time criminal named Willie, who plays Santa Claus each Christmas. Doing so gives him the opportunity to crack the safe of the department store in which he works, thus getting enough money to live through the year until the following Christmas, when he does it all over again. He works with a midget named Marcus, who serves as his elf, but is his partner-in-crime. Willie is utterly disgusting: every fifth word out of his mouth is a curse, and he is constantly drinking, never sober. He has no interest in any of the kids who line up to see him in his Santa role. One of the kids who visits him at the department store is a chubby dweeb, tortured by his classmates, and who lives in a enormous house with his senile grandmother (played by Cloris Leachman in a wasted roll.) The Kid, as he's known, seems to believe that Willie is Santa Claus.
Willie takes advantage of The Kid and his grandmother, and moves into their house, where he is able to invite barkeep Lauren Graham over for a bit of fun in the sack, having learned that she has a Santa fixation and likes him because of it.
The film has many funny moments, including some hilarious exchanges between Thornton and Tony Cox, who plays the elf/dwarf/midget/little person. But I found myself smiling and cringing simultaneously when kids would sit on Thornton's knee, and he'd ask them what they want for Christmas. Often his response would be, "Well, what the f*** is that?", or a version thereof. The kids stare at him, and leave. At one point, he is eating a salad in the mall fast food section, and is spotted by a mother and her child. When she approaches and tells her kid to tell Santa what he wants for Christmas, Willie rips into both of them, literally screaming that now isn't the time and that he wants to be left alone. It's an unnerving, unfunny scene, and is soon followed by another in which he approaches the Santa work area drunk as a skunk - I'll leave the rest to your imagination.
.jpg?t=20120527181101)
Article comments