Barnes & Noble

Here's a Christmas story that old Scrooge himself would have loved; prior to his reformation, that is. It's a scabrously funny, sublimely mean-spirited, and unabashedly tasteless yarn that pokes a sharp stick in the eye of Yuletide tradition. It is also a tour de force for Billy Bob Thornton, absolutely hilarious as the self-loathing safecracker who every year works as a shopping-mall Santa Claus, just prior to ripping the place off when last-minute holiday sales have swollen the cash registers with money. An unreliable drunk barely held in check by his diminutive accomplice (Tony Cox), Thornton's character moves in with a friendless, dull-witted, obese young boy (Brett Kelly) while enduring what is to him the seemingly endless stretch between Thanksgiving and Christmas. What's terrific about Bad Santa is that director Terry Zwigoff steadfastly refuses to soften the characters or situations; even the relatively benign leading lady (Lauren Graham) is portrayed as a boozing nymphomaniac. The screenplay shows no mercy toward Kelly's character, who seems at every point to deserve the indignities routinely inflicted upon him. John Ritter, in his final feature-film appearance, excels as a squeamish store manager who deplores his new Santa but can't bring himself to fire the miscreant. And Bernie Mac makes the most of his supporting role as a corrupt security chief who figures out the scam being worked by Thornton and Cox. This is not a movie for the vulgarity averse. Sequence after sequence seems designed to make the viewer say, "I can't believe they said that in front of a kid!" All in all, Bad Santa is the blackest of black comedies and the guiltiest of guilty pleasures, an unrelentingly savage lampooning of Christmas-movie conventions that revels in its own coarseness. And if this sounds like your sort of thing, the Badder Santa DVD edition promises a longer cut (by five minutes) of the film and a "Badder Santa gag reel." Ed Hulse

All Movie Guide

The Christmas season just got a lot less joyous in this very dark comedy. Willie T. Stokes (Billy Bob Thornton) is a con man and a thief who teams up with his friend Marcus (Tony Cox), a midget, for a very special scam each year during the holiday season. Willie gets a job as Santa Claus at a shopping mall, his pal tags along as an elf, and they use their employee status to crack mall security and rob stores blind just before Christmas. However, there's one flaw to this plan -- Willie is a bitter, foul-mouthed and perpetually grouchy alcoholic who doesn't care for kids, and it's all he can do to keep himself from getting fired while on the job. The mall's manager (John Ritter, in his last film appearance) is certain something's wrong with the Santa he's hired, so he asks the mall's chief of security (Bernie Mac) to do some research on Willie. Meanwhile, one of the kids Willie is forced to talk to becomes a regular customer; overweight, awkward, and the frequent target of bullies, the boy manages to arouse something like sympathy from Willie, who tries to give him some advice and develops something vaguely resembling Christmas sprit along the way. Bad Santa was directed by Terry Zwigoff, who enjoyed previous success with Crumb and Ghost World. Mark Deming

New York Times

Takes all the Christmas season's bad vibes and converts them into an achingly funny and corrupt dark comedy. Elvis Mitchell

Chicago Sun-Times

A demented, twisted, unreasonably funny work of comic kamikaze style, starring Billy Bob Thornton as Santa in a performance that's defiantly uncouth. Roger Ebert

Boston Globe

Without question, not for the children. It is, however, just the cup of rancid black-comedy eggnog for anyone fed up with holiday cheer in all its manifestations. Ty Burr

Product Details

• UPC: 786936745573
• Source: DIMENSION
• Aspect Ratio: Theatre Wide-Screen (1.85.1)
• Sound: Dolby Digital Stereo, Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround
• Language: English
• Subtitles: English
• Time: 3:06:00
• Sales Rank: 3,698

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