Bad Santa (2003)

BAD SANTA  (2003)  ¢ ¢
    D: Terry Zwigoff
    Billy Bob Thornton, Tony Cox, Bernie Mac,
    Lauren Graham, Brett Kelly, John Ritter
What if you took your kid to the store to see Santa Claus, and Santa turned out to be a mean, belligerent, foul-mouthed, antisocial, smelly, womanizing, safe-cracking, alcoholic bum? That's the joke in this sour, one-joke comedy, a shot of vitriol to counter the annual onslaught of holiday cheer. Santa gets drunk. Santa chain-smokes cigarettes. Santa stumbles around and acts like an asshole and uses words like "shit" and "fuck" in every goddamn sentence, and after a while you kind of get numb to it all. There's a nice payoff late in the film, though, if you make it that far. It happens when Santa, on the run from the cops after a botched burglary, gets gunned down trying to deliver a little stuffed elephant to the only kid on his Christmas list. Now that's funny. I realize I just gave away the ending, but trust me, you're not going to have enough invested in this guy to care want happens to him anyway. Merry Christmas.