Film
Bad Santa
- Director
- Terry Zwigoff
- Certificate
- 15
- Running Time
- 95 mins
“Fuck me, Santa! Fuck me, Santa! Fuck me! Fuck me! Fuck me!” Oh yes, Billy Bob Thornton is very bad indeed. When he’s not boning groupies, this unshaven, perpetually drunken, foul-mouthed department store Santa is abusing the kids who queue to sit on his knee, most of whom flee in tears. “Great – another fucking mongoloid!” he snaps at a child who’s too awestruck to speak. In the film’s opening minutes we see him vomit in an alley and piss his Santa suit because he’s too inebriated and lazy to leave his grotto. Think of Bad Santa as the anti-Miracle on 34th Street. If your idea of festive entertainment is watching Natalie Wood having her belief restored by kindly Kris Kringle, stick with the sugary fantasy. If you’d rather see Santa fuck fat chicks in the bottom while bellowing “You ain’t gonna shit right for a month!” be warned that you might wind up soiling yourself as badly as Billy Bob. Sorry about all that profanity, by the way. One of those Christian prudery websites has calculated that Bad Santa boasts “at least 147 ‘f’ words (5 used with ‘mother’, 18 used sexually)”, putting it right up there with GoodFellas.
Each Christmas, dissolute Willy (Thornton), his long-suffering midget sidekick Marcus (Tony Cox) and the latter’s avaricious mail-order bride tour the nation’s malls looking for work, their USP being that this Santa comes with his own elf. Their real purpose is to case the joint so safecracker Willie can steal all the loot on Christmas Eve. He then spends the next 11 months pissing his share away. Now they’re up against ineffectual store manager John Ritter and cunning security chief Bernie Mac.
This is the role Thornton was born to play, his cynical, sour-faced “eating, drinking, shitting, fucking Santa” being deliciously bereft of any Christmas spirit that doesn’t come in a bottle. Better yet, Terry (Ghost World) Zwigoff’s film confounds expectations by refusing to succumb to feelgood sentiment. When a bullied fat kid (splendidly played by Brett Kelly) attempts to befriend Santa, he’s treated with the same expletive-laden contempt and disdain as everyone else. And the closest Willie gets to redemption is when he beats the shit out of some children. Bad Santa is a real festive treat for everyone who loathes Christmas
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