Bad Santa

Bad Santa (2003) is about a safecracker who dresses as Father Christmas in shopping malls every year. Willie is an alcoholic, angry, and only takes the job in order to rob the store. His partner works as an elf. Then a lonely boy with no mother attaches himself to Willie and will not leave. Its achievement is that the character never improves. The whole American Christmas film template runs on warmth and redemption, and this one refuses that turn to the very end, settling for the smallest possible scrap of decency. Terry Zwigoff directed. He had come from documentary and his previous film was Ghost World. The Coen brothers are among the producers and the story idea is theirs. Billy Bob Thornton plays Willie. Bernie Mac and John Ritter play the store managers, and it was one of Ritter's last films; he died shortly after shooting. Several cuts are in circulation: the theatrical version, a director's cut and a longer one. It runs 92 minutes. Good for: black comedy, an inversion of the Christmas film, and Billy Bob Thornton. Less good for: the swearing is relentless and the humour is deliberately unpleasant. The treatment of the boy is uncomfortable. The women are thinly written, and the final stretch loosens the film's own rule a little.