Bad Santa (2003)
Retro Review #35: How bad is he? Ebenezer Scrooge and the Grinch combined have nothing on this guy.
Bad Santa (2003) — How bad is he? Ebenezer Scrooge and the Grinch combined have nothing on this guy.
+ Feature film, 1h 32m
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D ^
Family Suitability
+ ❌4️⃣ Extreme adults-only content. | R
Alignment with Judeo-Christian Values
+ ⛔4️⃣ Horrible/Extremely Unfavorable
+ 1️⃣/2 films in Bad Santa series ⭐
Bad Santa (2003)
Grade: D ^ (-5.0) / HOF: -30
EQ 👍C- | 📖C- 👥C- 📽️C+ 🎼B
DW 🚫3.4 | 🌚9 🌝3
POPCAP 💯n/a 🍿n/a 🧢n/a
L-R ☮️n/a ◀️n/a ▶️n/a 🛐n/a
Bad Santa gets a bad grade here. It’s not because I’m a prude or have no sense of humor. It’s because it’s supposed to be a comedy, but isn’t funny.
Well, to be honest I found about three funny moments in the film. The first time I nearly laughed was more than a whole hour into the movie.
Bad Santa is about a mall Santa named Willie, played by Billy Bob Thornton, and his bad elf partner in crime. They work every year at a different department store and crack the store’s safe before they leave, stealing a big haul that pays their rent until next Christmas rolls around.
There is absolutely nothing to like about Willie, which is tough when it comes to enjoying the film, since he’s the protagonist. It does strain credulity that his romantic interest in the movie would find a hostile, foul-mouthed, alcoholic loser even remotely attractive, but the film tries to explain it away by giving her some sort of Santa fetish.
This film made nine of ten best Christmas movie lists I checked, so there must be people out there who find Willie to be funny. Or else the editorial panels compiling the lists gave free picks to their 15-year-old sons, who watched the movie unsupervised at a friend’s house.
I’m not saying bad language and crude jokes can’t be funny. In the 60s, 70s and 80s, George Carlin and Eddie Murphy are just a couple of hilarious stand-up comedians who became famous using that type of content. I’m merely saying that type of content isn’t automatically funny, in and of itself, except maybe to juveniles of all ages.
(And if you are a subscriber of mine who thinks Bad Santa is a good and funny film, no offense intended. Tell me why I’m wrong about this film in the comments. Thanks for subscribing, and I hope we can agree to disagree on some films, and can find others on which to agree completely!)
I was hoping for better. This movie could have been a candidate to be an entertaining adults-only Dark Whimsy film (what we call Dark Whimzy in Rick Retroʼs Realm). But heavy and extreme amounts of adult content, such as found in Bad Santa, really hurt the Whimsy scale reading, and an R-rated movie needs to be much funnier than this to take that big of a Whimsy hit.
We get that Willie is bad. It’s in the title! If you must prove that in the film, wouldn’t, say, half a dozen F-bombs do the trick? Maybe even just two or three? There are 174 according to someone who counted (How? Why?), not to mention well over 100 other bad words.
My point is that all the objectionable content is gratuitous. In the last third of the movie, the heist plot, and the character drama, involving a little kid who gravitates to Willie, both get interesting. This movie might have made a pretty good comedy or a decent drama, or both, but was neither—too busy being bad to be any good.
All that said, I still might have given Bad Santa a C- based on entertainment value alone. But it had maybe double or triple the objectionable content and world view issues needed to get my lowest possible score for alignment with Judeo-Christian values.
Have you heard of a website called vidangel.com? It allows movie viewers to choose filters that remove nine types of offensive content. If you used all nine for Bad Santa it would be significantly shorter, and I suspect the audio would cut out frequently in the soundtrack of whatever remained.
Oddly, the movie includes several Christian holiday images and even briefly speaks of the nativity story. It might be just to shield the writers from criticism about Willie’s disdain for Christianity and all things good. But Willie hates himself too, so at least the writers know the difference between good and evil. The questions are: Why tell this story? Why in this way? It certainly comes off as more of a celebration of evil than a condemnation. (Except for bullying. Don't be a bully.)
Well, they later released two other versions, so a cynic might think the filmmakers were also cynics that just did it for the money.
The first alternate version of Bad Santa is an unrated version. Eight minutes longer. Probably just more offensive without being more entertaining.
Then there’s also a Director’s Cut that is four minutes shorter than the original version. I don’t have high hopes that the cuts made a good film out of Bad Santa.
Onwards!
P.S. There's also a sequel. It's available in two versions. <sarc> Yay. </sarc>
+ last viewed (2) 2026-01-11, HDX7, 1.85v, 5M
+ first viewed 2024-12-23, HDX7, 1.85v, 5M
+ 🎈🎄🎅👤💰😏😥🌑🥸
Family Suitability Detail
+ ❌4️⃣ Extreme adults-only content. | R
+ 😡-1 😵💫-2 🤬-4 🫢-3 🫣-0
Judeo-Christian Values Detail
+ ⛔4️⃣ Horrible/Extremely Unfavorable
+ ✝️ -4 ➕✝️❤️❤️🥴🥴 ➖🗿🗿🗿🤬🤬🤬💣💣💣😖😖😖❤️🩹♂️♂️👙🚬🚬🍺🍺🍺
+ ✡️ -4 ➕✡️🌗🌗🌗😠 ➖🗿🗿🗿🤬🤬🤬💣🌓🌓🌓🚨🚨😊🫢🫢🤑🤑🤑
+ 🗽 -4 ➖🗿🗿🗿💻💻💻⬛☠️☠️
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