Bad Santa is perfectly hilarious

Bad Santa's title is a tremendous understatement. Billy Bob Thorton's character is not just a bad mall Santa Claus, he is a terrible, awful human being. The entire movie is nothing less than the complete corruption of all human values and morality. And it is without a doubt the funniest movie to come out of Hollywood in a long, long time.

The movie centers around Willie (Billy Bob Thorton), a man who plays a shopping mall Santa Claus every Christmas. However, he and his sidekick elf Marcus (Tony Cox) don't work their job to spread the holiday spirit. They use the Santa gig as an elaborate disguise to get inside access, case the malls' security, and pull off a stealthy Christmas Eve heist.

Willie and Marcus have been partners in crime for many years, but the game gets more complicated when they decide to hit a mall in Phoenix. There, Willie meets habitual loser and loner Thurman (Brett Kelly), a first grader who idolizes him as the real Santa and lets him stay in his grandmother's house. Willie also gets himself involved with a perky bartender (Lauren Graham) who has one heck of a Santa fetish – which leads to some vaguely disturbing love scenes.

The duo also has to deal with the lone mall manager who's smart enough to catch on to them (Bernie Mac) and his dopey, whiny assistant (John Ritter, in his last role). Marcus struggles to hold Willie together for long enough to finish the job, and Willie struggles to keep from repeating his alcoholic father's sins and destroying himself and Thurman.

However, most of the plot serves as secondary support to the main focus of Bad Santa - Billy Bob Thorton, in quite possibly his best performance ever. Willie probably has a sum total of five minutes of sober screen-time. He must drink over fifty bottles of liquor, much of it at the mall in front of children. His self-loathing, world-hating Scrooge of a Santa Claus is a brilliant, phenomenally complex and immensely entertaining character.

Case in point – after Willie begins to feel sympathetic towards poor little Thurman, he goes on the obligatory beating spree to defend the kid from his older bullies. Afterwards, in his Santa outfit, he announces to Marcus, "You know, I think I turned a corner today. I beat the [expletive] out of some kids, and it made me feel great. Like I had a purpose or something." Another high point in the movie comes when Willie decides to teach Thurman to defend himself. He takes the boy out to box Marcus (who's a midget). By the end of the scene, all three of them are lying on the floor, holding their crotches and groaning. Pure cinematic genius.

Although the previews might make Bad Santa look like your typical holiday comedy with a raunchy twist, there is nothing cute, wholesome, or Christmas-spirited about it. The entire movie is comedy of the darkest kind, with nothing held back or sugarcoated. There is murder, suicide, gratuitous sex, unbelievable amounts of swearing, drinking, chain smoking and some of the most horrendous treatment of other human beings imaginable. But with the movie's fabulous direction and Thorton's perfect acting, all of this ends up being hilarious, even while it is often simultaneously heart-rending to watch.

However, it is the very complexity and depth of Willie's character that leads to Bad Santa's one major flaw. Compared to Willie, most of the other characters are simply flat and boring. The cast does an admirable and funny job, but each one of them is too locked into portraying one type of personality (greedy, angry, lonely) to expand and develop their characters at all. Also, the plot requires a major suspension of disbelief to make it seem halfway plausible.

While it is twisted and perverse, Bad Santa is the perfect movie for a mature audience that enjoys dark comedies. Please don't take Grandma or the kids along on this one, as it will probably scar them for life. This movie is the perfect antidote to cheerful holiday fluff.

Bad Santa is rated R for violence, explicit sex, and frequent cursing.