Bad Santa: A Bundle of Yuletide Jeer

Terry Zwigoff's Bad Santa starts on an idyllic note. To the rich sighs of the waltz from Shostakovich's second Jazz Suite, a light patter of snow falls from a pitch-black sky. Standing amidst this wintry cold, the camera peers into a small Irish pub that radiates golden warmth. Within, blissful couples are seen laughing and smiling, hugging and kissing, and exchanging gifts with brilliant Christmas cheer. The bar is like a picture catalog of love and happiness. But at its far end, hunched over his whiskey and all alone, sits a haggard man in a disheveled Santa suit. As he orders himself another round, his voiceover begins: "I was in prison once, been married twice. Once got drafted by LBJ and spent two years in some shithole in Mexico ... my Dad never did shit with his life and you could say the same about me." Seeing him surrounded by so much joy, it's hard to not sympathize with his vulgarity and anger. If you've ever spent the holidays alone, you'll know what I mean.

Here is a man long past liking life, himself or anyone else in it. He finds work as a shopping mall Santa, a horror he describes as "having little brats piss on your lap for 30 days," and if we can laugh at this pathetic line, it is because he delivers it with a wry, comic edge. Consider it a quirk in our national character, but there are few people with whom we more readily identity than with the underdog who knows he's getting screwed. Things don't come easily to this undignified nobody; indeed, his behavior is so crass, his manners so rude, it certainly helps that an actor like Billy Bob Thornton has chosen to play him. Who else could so winsomely combine Humphrey Bogart's jaded fatigue with Jack Nicholson's irreverent charm?

Thornton stars as Willie, a safecracker and thief who spends his Christmases robbing the very stores that pay him to be Santa. The film's funniest scenes come at the beginning as Willie does everything humanly possible to act in an un-Santa-like manner. He shows up to work drunk and unshaven. He curses at the children who ask him for toys. His very demeanor seethes depression and despair, yet none of this stops an endless line of bright-eyed children from squealing in his presence.

In these early scenes, I truly enjoyed how rumpled Thornton's character looks. He smokes two cigarettes at once as if one weren't enough. His misery is so pronounced, he pauses in the middle of a drunken rampage to finish a beer in which an old cigarette floats. I even enjoyed the exasperation and vulgarity with which he expresses himself. So many films are just eager to please that I was intrigued by where such mischief might lead. Thornton sank his teeth into a juicy character, and director Terry Zwigoff should have known how to best showcase him.

When Zwigoff made the fascinating documentary Crumb, he was suffering from so much pain and depression, he kept a gun under his bed in case life got much worse. When comic book artist Robert Crumb threatened to limit Zwigoff's access to his family, Zwigoff counter-threatened to kill himself. Who better to make a biting satire about a crude alcoholic Santa who mumbles to a complaining client, "If you think you can make my life any worse, go ahead, take a shot"? With the Coen brothers onboard as executive producers, I expected an acerbic human comedy on the level of The Big Lebowski, but more in keeping with Zwigoff's darker style. Instead, the film recycles its original burst of inspiration and mischievousness to the point of exhaustion.

Bad Santa traps its one interesting character in a boring, even disagreeable, hamster wheel of a plot. There are only so many times we can watch Willie tell off a customer or drunkenly stagger to work, and still laugh. After seducing us into believing we would be treated to yet another fine Thornton performance, we discover there are no hidden depths to his character, no corners to be explored. After our initial 20-minute introduction, we have surveyed all there is to see and those vices which first made him so intriguing, quickly outstay their welcome. Meanwhile, the screenplay tacks on subplots involving an unctuous Santa-loving kid (Brett Kelly), an ineffective store manager (John Ritter) and a crass security chief (Bernie Mac), none of which work.

And yet those opening scenes of holiday cynicism really had me going because they were smarter, sharper and funnier than most. Something tells me that if Thornton, Zwigoff and the Coen brothers collaborated on a new screenplay and remade this film entirely in the spirit of its first 20 minutes--refusing to limit themselves to shopping mall inanities--we would have a very good film on our hands. As it stands, however, Bad Santa does with its potential what Willie has done with his life.