Climactic uplift is far less important than the bawdy, nasty, inappropriate hilarity peddled by Terry Zwigoff’s 2003 gem, which also benefits from the participation of the late Bernie Mac and John Ritter.

| Dec 5, 2022

The film contains perhaps 90 seconds of genuine amusement. The rest is forced, juvenile, "off."

| Feb 15, 2021

His journey of humanization (or the softening of a terribly hardened heart) is sometimes genuinely poignant, even when it's surrounded by preposterously reprehensible conduct.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Sep 25, 2020

Lauren Graham was wonderful as the sweet, at times horny, bartender with a thing for Santa.

| Original Score: 3.0/4.0 | Sep 2, 2020

This tale of a misanthrope and a bullied boy is grossly funny yet rather affecting. Willie may not win Dad Of The Year but increasingly has the kid's interests at heart, and after drunkenly eating the advent calendar chocolates does at least feel guilty.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 6, 2018

The movie's one joke -- which will endure for the ages -- is the defamation of the Christmas spirit by Billy Bob Thornton, who stars as a drunken, chain-smoking, dirty-minded, incontinent, foul-mouthed and larcenous department-store Santa.

| Feb 24, 2016

if you hate the Yuletide season, you're part of the target audience

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 12, 2016

Thornton never backs down from anything the writers throw at him. Bad Santa takes everything beyond tasteful limits.

Full Review | Original Score: A- | Nov 23, 2015

In the annals of movie profanity, this movie would rate an Oscar, but it's actually pretty sweet at heart, although never sentimental. And if you don't believe me, you know what you can do.

| Dec 14, 2014

An antidote to forced holiday cheer, this scabrously funny misanthropic comedy is not for the whole family.

| Dec 14, 2014

A breath of fresh air.

| Dec 14, 2014

If Bad Santa does well at the box office, Zwigoff will get credit for being a savvy player. That Bad Santa is as vile and stupid as Ghost World was insightful and touching is something Hollywood has no interest in measuring.

| Dec 14, 2014

You'd better watch out, you'd better not cry, and you'd better not take the kiddies to see this wickedly adult vision of a boozing, whoring, swearing department-store Santa Claus.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 14, 2014

Bad Santa stays cheerfully acerbic right to the end, and so the film s glacial warming and glimpses of heart take on even more of an unmistakable glow, standing out against all that darkness.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Dec 14, 2014

This is really a one joke movie -- but that single gag is delivered with such caustic rancour by director Zwigoff that it achieves sublime heights of comedy.

| Dec 14, 2014

Bad Santa is definitely not PC, it's rude and crude and, I think, very funny.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Dec 14, 2014

A lot of people will get a lot of perverse fun out of this.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Dec 14, 2014

It might just make a few hardhearted cynics feel a warm fuzzy for the holidays.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 14, 2014

It's a movie that ages well. I suspect that Bad Santa, after playing profitably at the box office through the holidays, is fated for a long life as an out-of-nowhere cult hit, perhaps along the lines of Office Space.

| Dec 14, 2014

Once the rude shock of a profane Claus wears off, there's not really much to do except await the next outrageous remark.

| Dec 5, 2013