Bad Santa 2

The main problem with Bad Santa 2 is not really at the filmmaking level.  It's been competently made, and it's great to see most of the cast from the 2003 original back.  In particular, Billy Bob Thornton seems to be relishing the chance to return to his famous antihero role, and is clearly having a great time.  This would usually signal a great time for the audience as well, except for the fact that the movie can't shake the feeling that it's completely unnecessary.

There is no need for a continuation of the story of Willie Soke, the drunk and disheveled con artist who always seems to find his way into jobs where he has to pose as a street corner or mall Santa.  Everything that needed to be said about him and the people he interacts with was said memorably the first time around.  In a sequel, while it's great to see these characters again, it simply feels like a return visit that wasn't warranted.  There's also something more than a little off here.  The original was able to squeeze some very big laughs out of some highly uncomfortable situations.  This movie revels in bad taste and is often just as uncomfortable, if not more so, than the first.  But it has a harder time squeezing laughs out of the ideas it throws at us.  There are a few scenes that do deliver genuine laughs, but they are much scarcer this time around than before. 

We rejoin Willie at possibly the lowest point of his life, which is really saying something when you stop and think about it.  He's broke, suicidal and largely friendless, save for the simple-minded Thurman Merman (Brett Kelly), who has grown up physically, but not mentally since the last time we saw him when he was eight-years-old.  Willie is about ready to throw his life away, when he gets a visit from someone in his past he'd rather not see - his former partner in crime, Marcus Skidmore (Tony Cox).  Willie and Marcus obviously did not end the last movie on the best terms, but Marcus is willing to leave their troubles in the past, and needs his help with a safe cracking job in Chicago.  It involves getting in the Santa suit again, and stealing from a charity organization.  The job promises big money, but it also promises more trouble for Willie, as it forces him to be reunited with his estranged mother, Sunny (Kathy Bates), who is the mastermind behind the heist.  Willie would rather drink poison than have to team up with these two people who have been a constant thorn in his side his entire life, but he desperately needs the money, and reluctantly agrees.

There have been a lot of people who have been waiting 13 years for a sequel to Bad Santa, and I guess for them, this continuation will be enough.  But I don't think it will have quite the impact that the original had.  It doesn't really advance the characters or the story, and more or less repeats the same arcs as the first, only with less style and humor.  What made the original work was not just its savage sense of humor, but the fact that we actually ended up caring for some of the characters by the end, despite the fact that they were generally terrible people.  There was an honesty to the film mixed with its pitch-dark humor.  Bad Santa 2 pretty much goes straight to the gutter in its humor and doesn't look back.  It doesn't want us to grow to like or even think about these characters.  It just wants to put them in one deplorable situation after another, and have us laugh at the depths that they will sink to.

For every scene that does work (there's a scene halfway through where Willie has to listen to what kids want for Christmas that's a riot), there are just as many that fall flat.  Dark comedy is a tricky genre to pull off, and I wonder if director Mark Waters (Mean Girls) wasn't just in a little bit over his head when he took the job.  Or maybe the first film's director, Terry Zwigoff, was just more skilled at handling the genre.  Whatever the case, this movie definitely has the "dark" aspect down, but seems to falter when it comes to the "comedy".  Instead of making us laugh at what's up on the screen, we just feel kind of scuzzy and wince at certain moments that we suspect are intended to be comical, but just aren't in any light. 

I would say that Bad Santa 2 is not the sequel the first movie needed, but in all honesty, it didn't need one in the first place.  It was a wonderfully self-contained film that turned the cliches of the feel-good Christmas comedy on its head, and gave us one of the more memorable antiheroes in recent cinematic memory.  And while this one does have its moments, all it makes us think is that the filmmakers should have just left well enough alone.

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