12 Films of Christmas: Bad Santa

A film for those who see the festive period as a never-ending trudge from bar to bed via a shedload of booze, Terry Zwigoff’s delightfully deviant offering from 2003 gives us a trash-talking, beer-slugging Father Christmas, unimprovably played by Billy Bob Thornton. This chaotic Santa becomes the unlikely guardian of a troubled child. Wildly funny and oddly cheering, Bad Santa puts the crass in Christmas.

Bad Santa is brazenly drunken from start to finish, it even begins in a bar. Willie (Thornton) is a misanthropic, alcohol-dependent, suicidal safe-cracker. For the past seven Christmases he’s been moving from city to city, posing as Santa to infiltrate and rob shopping centres. His criminal accomplice is the suitably elf-sized Marcus (Tony Cox), the brains and professionalism of the operation, who’s accompanied by a mercenary, materialistic wife, Lois (Lauren Tom). When they move their operation to a store in Phoenix the trio appear to have struck gold with nervous store manager Bob Chipeska (John Ritter) and Willie even has some luck with the ladies in the “big and tall” section of the store - but have they met their match in Head of Security, Gin (Bernie Mac)?

Willie’s making a concerted effort to drink himself to death, with an exasperated Marcus describing him as “too pathetic for words”. Enter the unfortunately named Thurman Merman (Brett Kelly), a slow-witted and painfully sincere eight-year-old, and Willie’s last shot at salvation. Together with Willie’s love interest Sue (Lauren Graham) - a sweet, sozzled Santa groupie - Thurman slowly but surely turns this bad Santa good. Zwigoff’s film takes a pleasingly roundabout route to its fairly conventional moral conclusion, not that it ever sheds its depraved shtick. This refreshingly twisted approach is best summed up by Willie after what passes for an emotional breakthrough: “I beat the shit out of some kids today, but it was for a purpose. It made me feel good about myself.”

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Watch the trailer for Bad Santa