Not another stupid Christmas movie

Noel Vera

Terry Zwigoff's "Bad Santa" is like a cure for all those sticky,
sickly-sweet X'mas movies you see every year full of rosy-cheeked
children and tinsel sentimentality. It's like a cure for Christmas
itself, or at least the way it's celebrated nowadays--Santa drinks
and tries to be merry but ends up depressed and alcoholic, a parable
for us all.

The Claus in question is played by Willie T. Soke, who in turn is
played by Billy Bob Thornton. If Thornton hadn't been available,
Zwigoff would probably have had to invent him, an unholy cross
between W.C. Fields and Bill McKinney from "Deliverance;" Thornton
here is so typecasted it's almost a stroke of genius. With his days-
old bristles, bleary eyes, and mouth to put all the toilet bowls in
Grand Central Station to shame, Thornton's Soke is a department
store's worse nightmare--a drunken sot who snarls at kids and talks
large women shoppers into the dressing room to plug them in the
rear. It's not that the details are so funny, but that Thornton's so
willing to go all the way with them--he sustains the alcohol haze,
the bitter, libidinous snarl, for pretty much the length of the
movie, ringing a surprising number of variations on one or the other
without much letup. It's basically a one-joke premise, but the joke--
depending on whether you're a big fan of Christmas and Santa or not
(personally, I'm not)--is either nauseatingly unpleasant or thigh-
slappingly funny.

The plot--there is one, actually--revolves around Soke's skills as a
safecracker: every Christmas season he and an elf-playing dwarf
named Marcus (Tony Cox, who washes out the taste of years of cute
little Santa's helpers with industrial-strength astringent), apply
for work at a department store, case the joint, then put together a
plan to steal all the holiday profits. This year it's a store in
Phoenix, Arizona (which makes the sight of reindeers and snow all
the more surreal), but there are complications: a boy (played with
memorably unattractive blobishness by Brett Kelly) has developed a
fixation on Soke; Soke in turn has hooked up with Sue (Lauren
Graham), a woman with a Santa fetish; the store's security chief Gin
(a formidably skeptical Bernie Mac), has grown suspicious of the
pair; and Marcus may or may not have had his fill of Soke's self-
destructiveness.

The kid's relationship with Soke may be the "heart" of the movie,
but if so it's not the wholesome kind. Soke, needing to hide from
the police, doesn't hesitate to take advantage of the kid's offer to
move into his palatial, apparently parentless house (the only adult
supervision present is a near-comatose grandmother (an uncredited
Cloris Leachman)), helping himself to a bed and whatever's in the
fridge. Brett Kelly's character in turn feeds off of Soke's
acceptance (actually a barely expressed tolerance) with vampiric
masochism, taking the man's putdowns and grunts to be signs of
friendship, even fatherly affection--which, when you think about it,
they could be, at least to him. Soke's irritated responses are at
least responses, expressions of disgust that recognize the existence
of a human child (albeit a pathetically maladjusted one), where most
other adults would mainly glance at him and look away in
embarrassment. You can almost hear the boy thinking: "well, talking
to him beats talking to the furniture."

Rounding up the cast is John Ritter, in one of his last roles.
Ritter here plays a terminally embarrassed store manager named Bob
Chipeska, who has a difficult time firing an employee for
politically incorrect reasons, and an even more difficult time
talking about sex--watching him try to wrap his mouth around the
word "sodomy" while discussing one of Soke's escapades in the Plus
Sizes department is already worth the price of admission.

Zwigoff directs from a script by John Requa and Glenn Ficarra, whose
most notable previous work was "Cats and Dogs," an animal movie
heavy on digital effects and light on real laughs; the only
explanation I can come up with for the discrepancy is that, when you
think about it, the script for "Bad Santa" isn't that unique--
like "Surviving Christmas," it's an attempt to cash in on the mean-
spirited side of Christmas, only with much more (probably
improvised) profanity. Which should have emasculated the film,
turned it into the very thing it satirized (the exploitation and
trivialization of Christmas)--only Zwigoff has somehow taken the
material and made it mostly his own.

It isn't just that Zwigoff avoids broadcasting his jokes, or insists
that everyone perform in a strict deadpan style; it isn't just that
he gives the film odd rhythms and musical cues (with a more eclectic
than usual soundtrack) that, while they don't punch up the material,
does give it a semi-independent feel typical of his previous works.
Zwigoff is drawn to wretched outcasts who glare from outside the
window; he likes to tinker with these characters, explore them a
little, show sides to them--but not so much that they're neatly
explained away. Like the Brothers Crumb in "Crumb" (his masterpiece,
I think), or Enid in "Ghost World," his Soke can't seem to deal with
the world on its own terms; instead, they either retreat into a
world of their own (like Charles Crumb in his brilliantly ingrown
way, or Soke through alcohol), or grapple with the world wielding
their hostility as a weapon (the way Robert Crumb does, or Enid, or
Soke when he's aroused out of his whiskey stupor). Zwigoff has taken
what should have been yet another stupid Christmas movie and turned
it into a character study--made it funnier, because the comedy is
built not on the jokes (which aren't timed and cued anyway for
maximum yucks) but on the solid, unyielding truth of human nature.

As for the ending: it's a cop-out, certainly, a collapse of
Zwigoff's uncompromising tone and style into softheaded Christmas
cheer--of a kind. Only the twist that caps the film fits into the
plot so perfectly and blatantly it's like one of those happy endings
Hitchcock likes to foist upon his audiences--a sop to moralists and
simpletons that fools nobody (well, almost), and isn't meant to be
taken seriously. One of the better Christmas films in years.

(First appeared in Businessworld, 12/17/04)

(Comments? Email me at noelbotevera@...)