Bad Santa (2003)

Starring: Billy Bob Thornton, Tony Cox, 
Lauren Graham, Bernie Mac, John Ritter

Directed by: Terry Zwigoff

Written by: Glenn Ficarra, John Requa

Duration: 1hr 31mins

Rating: 4 out of 5

It’s the most wonderful time of the year, the season to be jolly, with everyone rocking around the Christmas tree… and so on and so forth.  Fair enough, I’m not disputing that. 

QUITE THE OPPOSITE OF JOLLY

But there is another side to the coin.  The pressure to spend spend spend, simmering family tension erupting into full-on feuds, the stress of trying to find 'the perfect gift’ (just one of the myths brazenly excreted by the annual advertising blitz)... plus the expectation that everyone should be so cheerful can itself become a burden.  For those who aren’t having a wonderful, jolly, rocking time, the surrogate feelings of loneliness and despair can escalate to a wintery nadir.

HO-HO-HUUUURRRGHH...

When we first meet Willie (Billy Bob Thornton), Bad Santa's anti-hero, he’s a snowflake’s breadth from that place himself.  Sitting alone in a bar, dressed in the familiar red and white outfit post-shift, Willie downs drink after drink, glancing with a mixture of longing and weary disdain at the groups of merry drinkers that surround him, whilst recounting his shitty life in voiceover monologue.  He then staggers outside into a snow-filled alley to vomit, in the one image that sums Bad Santa up.  At least, it would, if this movie was the one-joke affair that it could easily have been.  But it’s so much more than that.

CAN'T BLAME THE KIDS FOR THAT STAIN...

Willie has a seasonal scam: every December, he and his three-and-a-half foot partner Marcus (Tony Cox) gain employment at a different mall as Santa and Elf respectively.  Once they’ve sussed the joint out, they rip it off after hours, divide the loot, and go their separate ways ‘til targeting a new city next year.  This time round, however, proves to be anything but routine, as Willie gets involved with Lauren Graham’s perky waitress with a Santa fetish, unwittingly becomes a father figure for a bullied dim-bulb kid (Brett Kelly), and has to contend with Bernie Mac’s corrupt head of security and John Ritter’s jittery department store manager.

PERKINESS  =  OFF THE SCALE

Despite appearances, Bad Santa really is a traditional festive movie.  It’s about a cynical loner who discovers the true meaning of Christmas – this may be by way of pissing his pants, having sex in changing rooms and kicking a little person in the balls, but it’s a familiar, Grinch-esque journey all the same.  Willie is not an easy character to root for at first glance – he is, after all, a profane, anti-social, career criminal.  But loathe as we may be to admit it, there is a bit of Willie in all of us whenever we get overwhelmed by the demands of the season and feel like drinking ourselves into oblivion to block the whole ordeal out.  His nonchalant reaction to wetting himself and his instinctive reach for a flask of bourbon as soon as the last child jumps off his knee mark Willie out as an alcoholic early on; maybe it’s his fault his life has turned out this way, maybe it isn't – either way, the man is obviously sick and deeply, deeply unhappy.  As the film progresses, we find ourselves pitying him, and then warming to his misanthropy.  He’s self-serving, but not cruel; detached, but not sociopathic.  And he may be surly, but at least he isn’t fake, pretending to be happy or forcing everyone else to be.

BERNIE MAC'S IS ONLY THE SECOND SURLIEST FACE ON SHOW

Willie’s bad-tempered partner Marcus – certainly the brains in their little crime enterprise – typifies the kind of abuse the world has dished out to Willie his whole life.  “Your soul is dogshit, everything about you is ugly,” he chides him during one of many confrontations. “You’re a total loser, Willie – and you know it!” He’s right: Willie finally relents and goes for the old exhaust pipe/hose exit strategy.  But what stops him?  It’s realising that he has to stick up for the much-maligned kid; no one else will, like no one ever looked out for Willie his whole life.  Thus begins his first step on the road to redemption, made all the more gratifying since he’s had to come so far from the brink.

"CAN I FIX YOU SOME SANDWICHES?"

I shouldn’t neglect to stress quite how funny Bad Santa is.  The tone is blacker than the darkest lump of Christmas coal, the dialogue as hilarious as Ethan and Joel Coen's names on the credits (as executive producers) would suggest, and there are skilled comic turns by BBT, Cox, and the late duo of Mac and Ritter.  But the key point is that Bad Santa is a unique beast, an endlessly quotable Christmas movie that has just as much heart as spite, and that delivers the desired yuletide glow without the all-too standard side order of nauseating schmaltz.  ****