Christmas Spectacular - Bad Santa

There are two reasons to hate Santa. The first is because he never brought you that life-size My Buddy doll you wanted when you were 14. The second reason is because he's being played by Billy Bob Thornton in Bad Santa.

Before you take your kids to the mall to see Santa, read on to make sure you're not making a mistake.
THE HOLIDAY STORY- 
Billy Bob Thornton and his partner, Tony Cox, have an ongoing scheme that every year at Christmas, they get hired by a big department store to play Santa and his elf. After the store closes on Christmas Eve, the two of them get to work and rob the hell out of that place.  During the robbery, Thornton cracks the safe while Cox goes around filling his wife's shopping list. It's the perfect plan, except for one thing...

This was actually at the Bad Santa wrap party.

Santa is a drunk. He drinks from morning to night, and is barely able to live his life. Cox, while small and mirthful, is the real brains behind the operation. He constantly berates Billy Bob for being such a loser, but keeps working with him because of his amazing safe-cracking skills.

The mall they get hired at this year has a suspicious manager, played by John Ritter, who keeps badgering head of mall security, Bernie Mac. And Mac is one smooth, smoking, orange-eating mother.

This is my happy face.

In the meantime, Billy Bob meets a pathetic little kid who becomes enamoured with him. This might be the year that Santa decides to pull his act together.

IS THERE CHRISTMAS SPIRIT?

I went into this movie expecting a pretentious crap-straveganza, pretty much based on the DVD box cover.

Please please please. Let me just smack him in the face once.

Luckily, this movie had more to offer than Billie Bob trying to work out his personal problems with Angelina Jolie. There was some great chemistry between the cast. Thornton respects no one, including himself, and Cox does a good job of constantly putting Santa in his place.

Some of the funniest lines are between Thornton and the little kid, played by Brett Kelly. The kid is so blatantly dense and detached from reality that he comes off saying some really funny stuff, and Billy Bob treating him like any other adult makes for some laughs.

If I give you a cigarette, will you leave me alone?

This is also where the movie gets its sentimental plot. Without this sad looking little kid trying to turn Billy Bob into a father figure, and Thornton eventually feeling sorry for him, there wouldn't be any reason to like Billy Bob. And it kind of works too. By the end, you feel like Santa finally found some good, much like the Grinch. However, you still wouldn't mind seeing Billy Bob get shanked in prison because he was such a bad person through most of the film.

Holy Crap!

SCORE: Three and a half bottles of cheap beer with a cigarette floating in one.