25 Days of Christmas - The Naughty List: Bad Santa

This is one of the few on our list that I knew almost nothing about.  Bad Santa is hardly the name for this - awful, painful, really bad, hardly worth it Santa is more like it.  Billy Bob Thorton (I know, I should never have agreed to this) stars as a guy, Willie, who plays a mall Santa every Christmas in a different city.  He's a drunk, nasty man who would scare any parent at Christmas.  His partner-in-crime (literally) is Marcus (Tony Cox) who plays his elf, which means they always land the gig.  However, what they really do is scope out the mall/department store for a month, and figure out how to rob it on Christmas eve, skip town and live on the loot.  They've done this 6 times.  Then they get to Phoenix and John Ritter (RIP and I miss him) hires them to be the mall Santa.  However, Willie is at his WORST - he's dirty, drunk, sexing it up in the large ladies section, and swearing in front of the kids.  So Ritter goes to his head of security, Bernie Mac who eventually figures out the scam that's going on and wants in.  Marcus is sick of things falling apart and kills Bernie Mac, and during the final heist almost kills Willie.  However, during their time in Phoenix, a little boy just called The Kid, a pudgy, lonely, nerdy guy (Brett Kelly) comes to meet Santa.  Well, Willie drives him home one night and finds out The Kid lives alone with his crazy grandmother in a mansion.  So Willie moves in, with his new girlfriend Sue (Lauren Graham) and lives there for a while keeping up the facade that he is Santa and she's Mrs. Claus' sister and they got kicked out of the North Pole.  The Kid kind of tames Willie and helps The Kid stand up for himself (he's really not very likeable) and they ultimately come to like each other and help one another.

This movie is terrible.  I can't believe it makes it on Christmas lists so frequently.  If they had called it anything   else besides Bad Santa, it would have been forgotten, and thrown on the dung heap where it belongs.  I'm actually pretty shocked that anything that has to do with Christmas could really be THIS bad.  It's painful and I hate Billy Bob.  I only put it on my list because I hadn't seen it before and wondered why.  Now I know.  Do not bother with this movie.