.: Roberts' Reviews - Movie Reviews :.

While watching Bad Santa , I could not help but remember Peter Berg's under-appreciated 1998 film Very Bad Things . Both films took black humor into the darkest regions on celluloid, and both films, sadly, will be shunned by movie audiences for their savage perceptions on just how mean man can become.

Bad Santa stars Billy Bob Thornton ( Sling Blade ) as Willie, an alcoholic, womanizing department store Santa that along with his elf partner Marcus, played with wonderful sarcastic wit by Tony Cox ( Me, Myself and Irene ), spend Christmas each year robbing the stores of their holiday sales.

This years Christmas pillage takes place in Arizona , where the two again meet with a plan for a large heist. But Willie has fallen even more to his vices in the last 11 months, and he shows up in Arizona drunk and with bottle in hand. And soon, his lack of tact and morality lead him into a confrontation with the store manager, played by the late John Ritter ( Sling Blade ), and his background is then brought into question.

This awkwardness aside, Willie takes his role as Santa and it is the drunken interaction with the children's open hearts to Willie's cold don't-give-a-crap attitude, that the movie has its best moments. Willie pops children on and off his leg quicker than he can unscrew the top of his next beer bottle, while telling children in such crude details such lines as 'Santa's beard fell off because he was with a woman who wasn't clean'.

Enter what in Hollywood usually spells the life affirming change in a mean spirited character - that of a young, innocent child, known simply as The Kid and played by Brent Kelly. The Kid, follows Santa and later due to events that leave Willie homeless, opens his home as refuge while Santa supposedly works out his differences with Mrs. Santa. The two bond, but not in the traditional sense. Willie continues to show no emotion towards the kid, and the kid, in need of a friend and family (he lives alone with his Grandmother), takes the abuse thrown at him with neither a frown nor a smile. A scene that is ripe for a heart-tugging has Santa receiving a gift from the The Kid - a wooden carved pickle and is covered in dried blood - but Director Terry Zwigoff ( Ghost World ), doesn't spend much time or effort in trying to persuade the audience that a character so mean and self-centered can be swayed for but just a moment of kindness by another. And that in itself is part of the movie's charm. It doesn't pretend to be anything, or to follow traditional movie rules that normally result in box-office success. For instance, Willie's expected turning-the-corner speech is after he has beaten a bunch of children outside the local mall, and although he admits that it has changed him, he quickly notes how much he liked doing it.

The story does get more involved as characters played by Bernie Mac ( Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle ) as the security manager of the store that is on to the scam and Lauren Graham that falls for Willie (I've always had a thing for Santa's) enter the fray in varying degrees of plot development, but the real focus is with Billy Bob Thornton and just seeing how crude and rude the director was willing to let him go.

There are over 130 F-words uttered in Bad Santa and drinking and driving seem to be the norm without consequence, so a film for the kiddies this is not. However, for the grown-ups that don't mind savage humor and human grinchness to the extreme, this is the anti-Christmas film that among all the cuteness of the holiday films (see Love Actually ), has the type of humor that will leave a tickle in your belly and a lump of coal in your stocking.

udos to Terry Zwigoff, Billy Bob and the even the Coen brothers that produced the film, for not backing down or ruining the film with a happy ending. I hope someday to see a Very Bad Things/Bad Santa dvd gift set, that would make my Christmas.