Bad Santa 2 Is The Gift Worth Returning This Holiday Season | Film Review

When Bad Santa hit theaters 13 years ago, the whole world sat up and took notice. Here was an R-rated comedy revolving around the most cherished symbol of Christmas, Santa Claus. Only this wasn’t your grandfather’s Santa, no. This was the boozy, cynical, foul mouthed, ass-humping Santa of the modern age. Billy Bob Thornton starred as Willie and he transformed the spirit of Christmas into your dirty drunk uncle, and we loved him for it. Throw in a kid bordering on mental illness and a thieving dwarf and you have a movie made for the holidays.

Truth be told, Bad Santa is still one of my all-time favorite Christmas films and I watch it every year. Why? Probably because the thought of Santa beating the snot out of a gaggle of teens and violating Ms. Gilmore makes me giggle inside. Much like throwing gaggle, Gilmore and giggle in the same sentence did. It’s a movie that stomps on every Hallmark trope of Christmas flicks and does so with the glee of an 8 year-old who got away with a burp in church. Bad Santa represented the darker side of Christmas for those of us who haven’t lived a life stuffed full of Jimmy Stewart cliches.

Now here comes Bad Santa 2, another in the recent trend of a sequel to a classic film coming far too many years after the original. Why now? One can only assume Thornton spent the last of that award-laden Fargo money and decided to return to one of his most famous creations. You can’t really fault an actor for trying to recapture their past glory. Only now that it’s over, I wish he had made Sling Blade 2 instead. Mmmmmhmmmmm.

Willie (Thornton) is recruited back into the fold after his former double-crosser, Marcus (Tony Cox), tricks him into robbing a Chicago charity. Turns out, Willie’s even sleazier mom, Sunny (Kathy Bates), is working the charity as their inside man. That’s right, in this world, someone actually thought Kathy Bates looks old enough to play Thornton’s mother. And they say Hollywood isn’t ageist. Throw in Christina Hendricks (Mad Men) as the head of the charity – who of course comes to somehow fall for a drunken Santa – and the return of Thurman Merman (Brett Kelly, who now looks like an actual inflated version of his child self), and POOF! You have Bad Santa 2.

I wanted to love this so much. I was near bouncing in my seat as the lights dimmed and Willie finally returned to my local Cineplex. Instead of that seedy joy the original left me with, Bad Santa 2 made me debate downgrading my original film from blu-ray to DVD just on principle. Sure, there are a few clever jokes dispensed here and there (mostly at the expense of Cox’s diminutive stature), but mostly you’re just left checking your watch. The plot is repetitive, the jokes are staler than a 4 day-old Christmas ham, and the pacing is all over the map. This isn’t just a poor sequel, it’s a bad movie.

Not to mention how much the likes of Bates and Hendricks – two actresses with immense talent between them – have to slum and degrade themselves in order to even fit in here. Thornton sodomizing Hendricks next to a dumpster isn’t clever on the level of “F me, Santa!”, nor is Bates playing with a stolen vibrator something the Oscar winner will slap on her extensive resume, it’s just sad. And both of these ladies deserve a better spread to fire off their vulgar comedic barbs.

Honestly, we all deserve better. Do yourself a favor this holiday season and give yourself the gift of self-worth, skip this Christmas brick and re-watch the original Bad Santa. Unlike this tepid sequel, it was the gift that gave you more than just a burning sensation.