I had been meaning to get around to watch Bad Santa Unrated, but there always seemed to be something better to do. Reading books couldn’t be done, because my light bulb had gone out, and I just couldn’t be bothered to fix it until the morning. So, I needed a film to watch, and Bad Santa it was.
It’s difficult to say why the Coen brothers, once the focus of intelligent, witty and dark humoured films, have had a glut of rather dismal films of late. They seem to have, to me at least, lost their sharpness and their ability to write good stories with twists. Ruining the classic comedy The Ladykillers has been frustrating for me, I thought they were smart. Still, all directors are fallible, and the Coen brothers are human.
Bad Santa is directed by Terry Zwigoff who’s previous work includes Crumb (a biopic of Bob Crumb, the comic writer) and Ghostworld (mixed opinions on this, a borefest or wholly smart?). As I understand it, this is the first film he’s worked on with the Coen brothers. But this is very much a Zwigoff film.
Willie (Billy Bob Thornton) is a depraved and desolate Santa Claus. An alcoholic and sex obsessed disaster, who has spent time in prison and is reforming. I say reforming, but he’s just managing to commit robberies without getting caught.
Alongside him is his side kick and pretty much the brains of the operation, Marcus (Tony Cox) and his mail order bride Lois (Lauren Tom) who is the getaway driver. In case you aren’t aware who Tony Cox is, and for the sake of simplicity over the indulgence in political correctness, he’s the midget black actor from Me, Myself & Irene as well as a host of other film cameos. In this he gets a fair share of screen time, profanity being his mainstay.
The unrated version has an extended death scene, some more profanity, a couple of extra minutes here and there, and that’s about your lot
After one last job, Willie tells Marcus he’s giving up. Marcus predicts that he will call Willie in a year and he’ll be back robbing safes from shopping malls, since he’ll piss away the money on alcohol. Marcus is right (predictably) and they’re back together doing another job.
During the job of pretending to be Santa and having kids sit on his lap asking for gifts, Wille comes across a kid (Brett Kelly) who seems retarded but is smarter than he looks. Through an unlikely incident they form a bond, and through predictable circumstances he is stuck with the kid who’s mother is dead, father is in prison for embezzlement and only has is grandmother looking after him.
Willie also meets Sue at a bar, and they form a relationship whereby she loves to be screwed by Santa, a fetish of some description that she developed during child hood. Naturally, Willie is too much of a gentleman not to oblige her in her indulgence.
At first I was going to write this review and say, “It’s good, not great” but the more I think about, the more I realise I’m just kidding myself. For all the nuances, subtle and obvious jokes, for the most part the film is a one trick pony. Willie swears a lot, Marcus swears a lot, and you just wait for one of their robberies to go wrong. You can feel it coming, you know there’s going to be a double cross, there will be a murder, and you can immediately guess who it is.
The profanity is not really a problem, he is a screw up, and it’s expected. We can accept that he’s an alcoholic and that he likes to screw women. We can also accept that feisty and kinky Sue (Lauren Graham) has a fetish for screwing guys in Santa outfits and they will fall in love and he’ll start to show his tender side. Then there’s the cliche of the small kid that changes the miserable and depressed guy through love and companionship. Let our hearts bleed.
The acting is actually quite decent. I felt Bernie Mac’s part was rather feeble, but he still managed to crack a few decent jokes. The chemistry between the kid and Willie was good, and it worked for the most part. Marcus and his mail order bride do come across as the devious, and malicious brains: money first then anything else.
Towards the end of the film, we’re led to understand that Marcus and his wife have been using Willie, who by the end of the film is a reformed character touched by the innocence of a child’s friendship. The following chase scene, whereby he insists getting the kid’s Christmas gift was rather predictable yet again – after all, what law will stop a man from giving his best friend a toy? Not even bullets can stop him.
So, we have moments where Willie is trying to kill himself, where he shows his kind hearted side in his defence of the kid, his interest in women, and his disinterest in the job as Santa. But we’ve seen this all before, in other guises one hundred and fifty billion times before. It would nice if, just for once, some ounce of originality was injected.
There are some funny jokes, and amusing scenes, but for the most part they’re rather hit and miss. More miss than hit I might add. The jokes are perhaps more subtle than laugh out loud, rib ticklers that knock you out of the chairs. The quality of the jokes can perhaps be surmised in the rather obvious kick in the balls in the boxing ring, where everyone falls to the ground in fit of testicular pain. Yes, films today still fall to the lowest common denominator. It makes sarcasm look positively smart.
It’s a crass film, with plethora of swearing and ludicrously implausible scenes. I guess plausibility isn’t really a problem with this, but the way in which Willie changes from good to bad, after all this time is just not acceptable and really just seems a case of running out of ideas of what to do with a bad character. Some may say the ending is not a happy one, I would disagree in fact everyone is essentially happy except the bad guys. It’s pretty simple and formulaic and requires as much brains as figuring out or watching an episode of Baywatch.
It’s difficult to say why the Coen brothers, once the focus of intelligent, witty and dark humoured films, have had a glut of rather dismal films of late
Bad Santa is perhaps intentionally a dumb, regular cliche of a film. If that was the intention, then they hit the nail firmly on the head and knocked it through the other side. If it was a case of trying to portray something a little more intelligent, witty and adult then they failed terribly because it’s the sort of witless humour 15 year old kids use.
The unrated version has an extended death scene, some more profanity, a couple of extra minutes here and there, and that’s about your lot. Is it worth? Without question, no. Rent it by all means, but it’s pretty dire as far as I am concerned. There are some pointless scenes, such as the extended death scene (one way to add to the low intelligence argument), a scene where a kids MP3 player is taken off him by Bernie Mac for stealing a game, and a probably a lot more I care not to remember.
Some of the film works, but most of it doesn’t and I fail to see why something like this would receive a Golden Globe nomination. I’ll admit, I did enjoy the first part of the film, but as soon as the Willie/kid relationship happened it pretty much destroyed the rest of the film for me. As did the cliche of what was going to happen next. Willie is played well by Thornton, who does a good job of playing the dejected and lifeless Santa. Graham plays her part as the Santa fetishist well, and Cox plays his part as the angry midget trying to get the job done pretty well too. If anything, their performances were good, but the story line which started well, ends up in Predictblewood instead of becoming something better, it stuck to the safe
option, and that’s pretty disappointing.
Verdict: Flawed, predictable and cliched. Good performances ruined by crap script writing. Rent or borrow.