Bad Santa
Most holiday themed movies are about redemption, acceptance of your fellow man, finding love and/or family, rejecting crass commercialism, or some combination of the two. Somehow, in the midst of Bad Santa, all of these things happen, but believe me, every “holiday” moment in this film is prefaced by some seriously dark ,dark business. I am still trying to work out what I thought of this movie. I loved Billy Bob Thornton in the title role - he can impart rage and loserliness and vulgarity and unlikability and still, somehow, be likeable, which is key to holding our interest. Knowing Thornton’s capacity for getting scrungy and unlikeable on screen, take that knowledge and make him ever so much more far gone and you have a taste of this character. There is no reason on this earth why we should “like” his character of Willie, a drunk bastard who hates kids, people, his partner, everyone. He and his elf-garbed partner Marcus (Tony Cox) - well, they are not good people, filled with the Christmas spirit, though Marcus pretends much much better than Willie.
Enter the kid, Brett Kelly. He is a dim, all-accepting misfit, who sees something in Willie that no one else but a nyphomaniac Santa fetishist barmaid (Lauren Graham) sees. Kelly has an unbelievable face; he is the Will Ferrell Elf but powerless and submissive. The kid is so off balance in such a sweet way that you recoil at how Thornton can be so cruel to him. We don’t see what the barmaid sees, but because she sees something, we try and look a little harder…until Willie pukes into our eye. These two people infect Willi’s life against his will and, for the majority of the movie, appear to make no dent at all. I am not saying he comes out all clean shaven and gainfully employed, with a golden retriever at his side and the Wall Street Journal on his lap, no sir. Take that character (created by the writers of Cats & Dogs), stick him in the hands of Misfit Movie Man Terry Zwigoff (Crumb, Ghost World), and you’ve got one dark film about a dark, remorseless man.
Bernie Mac plays a shockingly restrained (and I actually enjoyed him for the first time) department store security guy, and the late John Ritter is underused as a mousy and squeamish store manager. If Ritter’s character could have seen the whole Willie we saw, he would be fifty times more squeamish; Thornton is over the top. As Willie continued in his spiraling, horrible descent of depravity, I wondered where the film was going - it seemed to me that his life’s purpose was darkness and misery and the arc of the story seemed bent only on following him there; he responded to no mercy, generoisity, humiliation, anything. He is unrepentant in his negativity, in his self-destruction, in the destruction and exploitation of all around him. We only suddenly feel his pain when it is too late for him to learn from it.
The Coen brothers executive produced this film - I wonder if this was too dark even for them? Bad Santa makes Fargo look like The Grinch, but with a killer soundtrack. See for yourself. But be warned.
MPAA Rating R -language&sexual content, some violence
Release date 11/26/03
Time in minutes 93
Director Terry Zwigoff
Studio Dimension Films
