Bad
Santa
Bad Santa is like some
sort of sick, perverted Christmas miracle. An unrelentingly
dark comedy, it is also one of the funniest of the year, and,
ironically, one of the most lovable. How a movie this cracked
got a green light, got made, got released, in this very hard
R-rating form is beyond me. Someone at Dimension Films must
have really loved this film and stood behind it at every point
of the process. Bless their disturbed, twisted hearts for
it.
Billy Bob Thorton plays the titular
mall Santa, a perpetually unkempt loser named Willie. Along
with his dwarf partner Marcus (Tony Cox), they work the Christmas
season at a department store and then, on Christmas Eve, sneak
into the store after it closes - I won't spoil how - and loot
both the merchandise (Marcus has a list that's drawn up by
his gaudy, normal-sized wife) and the safe, which Willie cracks.
Last season they scored over $100,000 and Willie, who despises
himself with an almost religious fervor and is perpetually
drunk, vows he's "out." Marcus has heard it before,
but a few months later we see Willie fulfilling his promise
of moving to Miami. He's behind a bar cutting limes and pours
a drink. Then, the real bartender shows up and throws him
out. So when Marcus calls up with a mall scoped out in Arizona,
Willie reluctantly re-dons his ratty Santa costume for another
go.
There our amoral heroes find work at a mall looking to cut
corners (and have a "real midget" in the act), run
by the late John Ritter in a small, but wonderfully nervous
role. Almost immediately, Ritter's manager realizes he's made
a mistake, what with a Santa who loudly refers to his penis
as a "f***-stick," and screws plus-size women in
the dressing room on his break, and so he get help from security
chief Gin (Bernie Mac), who takes his job so seriously he
spends most of his time bemoaning the state of an American
society that produces so many potential thieves.
The final important character
is one named Thurman but credited as "The Kid" (Brett
Kelly) -- a chubby, innocent little dork who lives with his
one-foot-in-the-grave grandmother and is so desperate for
a taste of the Christmas spirit and a father-figure that he
latches onto Willie's Santa and even lets him shack up at
his place when things get hairy at Willie's hotel. The casting
is perfect - where did they find this kid who at once is so
gross looking? We see him with snot, and realistic snot, not
exaggerated Farrelly Brothers stuff, hanging from his nose
on more than one occasion. Yet, in a strange way, he's also
kind of adorable.
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The director of the delightful
madness is Terry Zwigoff, who in his documentary Crumb, made
one of the single most depressing movies I have ever seen,
and last made indie darling Ghost World. His films all focus
on characters who have gotten the proverbial short end of
life's stick. In the previous two films the humor was dark
and subsumed within a straighter drama, but Bad Santa goes
for laughs, and no movie I've seen this year is funnier. What's
more, though Zwigoff softens his anti-life stance just a bit
for Bad Santa, he never once goes for schmaltz or middlebrow
notions of proper Christmas etiquette. Willie remains a thoroughly
despicable guy, even as he warms to this obnoxious little
kid who won't shut the hell up. In some ways, it reminds me
of an edgier, smarter Mallrats, in that it loves poking holes
in America's love of neutered, safe mall culture with jokes
about anal sex and venereal disease.
In this way, Bad Santa is a Christmas
movie for people of all denominations. It's less a celebration
of Christmas than a condemnation of it, and what it embraces
is not the mysterious, ethereal spirit we're also supposed
to be consumed with at holiday time but rather the importance
of a family in the life of a child. It's requisite happy ending
is still plenty dark while hitting a realistically warm note
that doesn't sacrifice the integrity of the characters it
has done a phenomenal job of creating.
I can't overstate how much I
loved Bad Santa. I'm unsure how audiences will take to it
- the one I was with howled with laughter but the movie is
so dark I'm skeptical of its box office potential as an anti-Christmas
comedy at Christmas time. If it doesn't find a mainstream
audience, rest assured than in five years, every person with
a DVD collection worth its salt will own Bad Santa. Whether
it becomes a sort of perverse holiday favorite, or simply
a beloved cult film, it is unquestionably a fantastic movie.
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