BAD SANTA 2 – Review

Comedy sequels are notoriously tough to pull off. Nobody will be satisfied by merely repeating jokes and gags from the original, but if you change the formula too much you risk alienating fans.  Though it’s an inferior sequel, BAD SANTA 2 balances that dilemma just enough to recommend. Director Terry Zwigoff’s original BAD SANTA from way back in 2003, was an uproarious all-out assault on political correctness. Billy Bob Thornton played Willie Soke, a crass, vulgar drunken crook who, with his midget sidekick Marcus (Tony Cox), spent each Christmas working as a department store Santa with the aim of robbing their place of employment. BAD SANTA was a misanthropic opposite to the season’s traditional batch of sugary sweet holiday stories. Now 13 years later comes the sequel. Zwigoff (who hasn’t made a film since 2006’s ART SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL) is out, replaced by Mark Waters, best known for MEAN GIRLS, who duplicates the characters, the structure, the vomiting and alky tremors of the first movie, though with somewhat less fizz.  BAD SANTA 2 isn’t a dud at all — much of it is very funny, and there are many memorable jolts, outlandish filthy moments and at least one hilarious new character, but it feels at times like a group of deplorables in search of a story.

Willy is introduced in the sequel attempting to end his wretched life by hanging himself with the cord from a toaster. This effort is interrupted by his annoying, curly-haired young pal Thurman Merman (a returning Brett Kelly) who hands him a letter from Marcus (Tony Cox again) who is out of prison and need’s Willy’s safe-cracking skills to steal $2 million from a Chicago charity out collecting buckets of Christmas cash from street donors. Willy teams up not just with Marcus, but also his own estranged degenerate mother Sunny (Kathy Bates). Willy and Mom don Mr and Mrs Claus suits and get closer to a safe full of cash, but bickering, betrayal, short tempers, and the charity’s busty director (Christina Hendricks) complicate the caper.

What makes BAD SANTA 2 work as well as it does is that Billy Bob Thornton’s Willy is still an amusing, deadpan movie character with the power to shock, the perfect antidote to the usual saccharine Christmas confection. Whether he’s swigging booze, cussing at the children he has no patience with, or having rough sex in an alley (or bathroom), Willy epitomizes everything a street corner Santa shouldn’t be.  Matching Thornton in terms of coarseness is Kathy Bates, but there is surprising depth to the relationship between mother and son, and much of their back and forth is side-splitting. No movie could possibly have surpassed the original and BAD SANTA 2 is indeed a noble effort, but it’s the first one people will be watching years from now, not the sequel.

3 of 5 Stars