In calling “Bad Santa 2” the feel-bad movie of the season, let me be clear: I don’t mean that it revives the rude-and-crude fun of the original hit, which turned the traditional Christmas film on its head. I mean the opposite. Trying to recapture that dark magic doesn’t work the second time around. This lazy sequel is a lump of coal in a dirty stocking.
Terry Zwigoff’s provocative 2003 film, produced and evidently script-polished by master cynics Joel and Ethan Coen, created an unforgettable Scrooge character in Willie Stokes. He was a profane, lecherous, alcoholic safecracker who specialized in ripping off department stores while posing as their holiday St. Nick. It was a snarling star turn for Billy Bob Thornton, making the blunt, vulgar, one-gag character into an offensively hilarious real person.
Thornton is back in his grody Kris Kringle disguise. This time, though, he’s giving his impressive all to rework jokes more than a dozen years past their expiration date. Rather than finding humor in breaking taboos, this version is an endless quest for the easiest punch line.
In this follow-up helmed by Mark Waters, we reconnect with Willie while he is in a suicidal funk about his permanent position at the bottom of life’s barrel. Brett Kelly, who played Willie’s naive young sidekick Thurman Merman, returns as the early adulthood version, still the clueless innocent. Interrupting Willie’s effort to hang by a noose from his apartment’s ceiling fan, Thurman hands him a cash-filled parcel from his former crime partner Marcus (Tony Cox). Part olive branch and part bribe, the package promises Willie a shot at the proverbial one last job in Chicago, where the diminutive con man aims to snatch $2 million from a local charity.
