Before the opening credits of Terry Zwigoff's Bad Santa finish rolling, the title character, a loser named Willie Stokes (Billy Bob Thornton) has downed shots, smoked cigarettes and vomited in a trash can, all while dressed as jolly old St. Nick. If that's your idea of humor, you'll love Zwigoff's film, a bitter, cynical and hilarious look at Christmas that is definitely not for kids. If you spend the holidays hanging lights and singing carols, though, you may want to just go see Elf again.
Not only does Willie drink, smoke and puke, he also swears constantly in his job as a department-store Santa, really only a cover so that he and his midget accomplice Marcus (Tony Cox) can rob the store blind at the end of the season. It's something they do every year, and Willie's getting tired of the routine, spending most of his time drunk or distracting himself by cavorting with a bartender (Lauren Graham) with a serious Santa fetish.
He's got no qualms about crashing with a rich kid (Brett Kelly) who lives with an oblivious grandmother, taking advantage of the pudgy loser's hospitality, driving the absentee dad's car and using the Jacuzzi for sexual misadventures.
Zwigoff, who directed misanthropic masterpieces Crumb and Ghost World, has crafted a darkly funny film out of what is essentially a single joke. The story really shouldn't work, especially as Willie slowly bonds with the kid (whose name he never bothers to learn) and has to deal with complications in his store heist. Yet the screenplay by Glenn Ficarra and John Requa (with some uncredited help from the Coen brothers) manages to keep things fresh and strangely poignant, and the performances all hit the mark perfectly.
Thornton nails Willie's anger and pathos, and Kelly is amazing as the near-retarded kid who loves Santa no matter how vulgar and violent he is. Bernie Mac and the late John Ritter bring life to their small roles, and Lauren Graham happily trods on her sunny Gilmore Girls image as the very naughty "Mrs. Santa's sister."
Marketing this kind of film can't be easy, as anything with "Santa" in the title and Christmas as the theme automatically screams "family fare." Audiences are likely to either love it or hate it, but Grinches and Scrooges everywhere have finally found a holiday movie to call their own.