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Bad Santa
(Reviewed November 13, 2003)
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This is one that I should have liked a lot more than I did: a blacker-than-black comedy about a nasty department-store Santa (Billy Bob Thornton) who drinks, chainsmokes, fornicates and hates kids almost
as much as he hates his own miserable self. But what may have made a good 15-minute comedy sketch gets really old when stretched out to an hour and a half. I mean, there's only so much verbal child
abuse and self-destructive self-loathing a guy can stand.
"Bad Santa" is a real misstep for director Terry Zwigoff, who previously did the excellent "Crumb" documentary and the great "Ghost World." I get what he was going for here -- a comedy so
rude, mean and cruel it rejects nearly any semblance of sentimentality. But most of the movie is so relentlessly depressing that the irony becomes hard to appreciate (and the ending seems to sabotage those
nihilistic intentions, anyway).
If I want to see somebody act like a hates-everything, bitter, mean-spirited asshole for 90 minutes, I'll save eight bucks and look in a mirror.
Back Row Grade: C-
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