Bad Santa
Director: Terry Zwigoff
Year Released: 2003
Rating: 3.5
Hilarious film of drunken Santa who (with the help of a vertically challenged friend) robs malls after hours and spends his non-Holiday days in Florida. Billy Bob Thornton is perfectly cast as the title character, delivering the R-rated insults with stone-faced calm, and the screenplay keeps the jokes rolling until the very end. It's been an eternity - Clerks, I'm guessing - since a movie was so purposely irreverent; the effectiveness of the comedy makes up for the inherent sadness of Thornton's character (which threatens to ruin the final act, but thankfully does not) and the simplicity of the concept ("What if the sacred image of St. Nick is spit on?"). As with Jon Favreau's Elf, it owes a tremendous debt to David Sedaris' fantastic personal essay, "SantaLand Diaries."
