Review

Bad Santa 2

Willie Soke (Billy Bob Thornton) is back and as miserable as ever in Bad Santa 2, the sequel to the 2003 black comedy that became a surprise hit.
Willie Soke (Billy Bob Thornton) is back and as miserable as ever in Bad Santa 2, the sequel to the 2003 black comedy that became a surprise hit.

Q: When is a nihilist no longer a nihilist?

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Thurman Merman (Brett Kelly) and Sunny Soke (Kathy Bates) are looking for a quick payday in the misanthropic comedy Bad Santa 2.

A: When he's coerced to make a sequel.

Bad Santa 2

78 Cast: Billy Bob Thornton, Kathy Bates, Tony Cox, Christina Hendricks, Brett Kelly, Ryan Hansen, Jenny Zigrino, Jeff Skowron, Octavia Spencer

Director: Mark Waters

Rating: R, for crude sexual content and language throughout, and some graphic nudity

Running time: 1 hour, 32 minutes

In Bad Santa 2, Billy Bob Thornton returns to the dark, depraved role he rode to relative success way back in 2003. Why reprise a character from 13 years ago, exactly? I wish I could say it's because there were more facets of the character to explore, but in truth, I suspect its uncomplicated connecting theme -- jaded, sex-addict alcoholic pretends to be Santa in order to commit robberies -- just rang true in the ears of the execs at Miramax.

We start, again, with Willie (Thornton), still a louse, still drunken and wretched -- his life, he tells us with a sigh, is "a f***ing miserable nightmare" -- and wanting to kill himself (his two suicide attempts are actually comic stand-outs in the film, if that gives you any indication of its tone). He's interrupted in his endeavors by his old friend Thurman (Brett Kelly), now a grown man, but still irrepressibly naive, and very much adhered to Willie's side, much as he grouses about the kid. Turns out Thurman has come with a package for Willie, which includes a chunk of money and an invitation to a reconciliation meal with Marcus (Tony Cox), Willie's erstwhile little person partner, just out of prison from their last caper together, who has a new heist scheme involving a massive charity in Chicago.

Once the pair arrive in Chi-town and check in, however, it's revealed to Willie that there's a third partner involved: Sunny (Kathy Bates), his ex-con mother, whom he despises. In order for the caper to be pulled off, Willie has to make good with the female head of the charity (Christina Hendricks), while Marcus attempts to seduce one of the female security officers (Jenny Zigrino), in order to steal her set of keys. Things get muddied when Thurman comes unannounced to visit Willie in Chicago, and muddier still when it becomes clear everyone is trying to cut everyone else out of the picture, as soon as the money is nabbed.

It's best not to dwell terribly long on the plot -- it's pretty clear screenwriters Johnny Rosenthal and Shauna Cross certainly didn't. The film works best as a series of a kind of existential cartoons on the nature of narrative character: Just how irredeemable can you make someone before the audience simply turns on him? (Urge to reference past election ... rising ....) As it happens, it's not too much of an issue, because after Willie's initial flurry of dour voice-over invective and attempted suicides, he becomes increasingly neutered, exposing soft spots on his otherwise gnarled and grizzled countenance, designed expressly for us to sympathize with him.

Sadly, as the character begins to sag, so too does the film's momentum. You can feel the screenwriters struggling to fill even 90 minutes of screen time with their half-baked story, and because, save Sunny, they don't bother creating any remotely realized new characters for them to bounce off of -- Hendricks in particular is utterly wasted as a recovering alcoholic "dirty girl," who inexplicably finds the gruff, scabby Willie exactly her cup of tea -- they're stuck regurgitating previous tensions (Marcus' height, Thurman's cluelessness, Willie's depravity) until the whole thing wheezes to its climax, leaving behind a line of shredded plot threads to blow in the harsh winter wind.

Thornton takes to these sorts of roles -- check his similar character in the Richard Linklater remake of Bad News Bears; or his soulless, twisty conniver in Our Brand Is Crisis -- and has a way of making his characters interesting, if irredeemable, but even he runs out of different tones with the one-note Willie (whose standard response to nearly any piece of new information he receives is a grim "You're s****ing me," over and over).

Once we've established the funny in the film is almost entirely comprised of can-you-top-this crass anatomy jokes, it runs out of ways to push the envelope after the first act, giving it not terribly much to do going forward. Every so often an odd joke will appear, as if out of a foul-smelling fog (one young girl sitting in Santa's lap at a party requests "A penguin; it doesn't have to be alive").

Speaking of Sunny, then, a quick shout-out to Bates, who has spent decades of an impressive and unlikely career channeling her brand of outspoken boisterousness into numerous memorable characters. Sunny isn't any great shakes, as written, but Bates is still able to find just enough humanity to flavor her character beyond the flat confines of the script and keeping her from being utterly one-dimensional.

In that sense, the film is a sort of interesting, if grotesque, test of acting mettle vs. uninspired screenwriting. Like a pair of seasoned jazz pros turning a bland ditty into something at least mildly diverting, Bates and Thornton are able to exit this mess with most of their dignity intact. The same cannot be said for the creative team behind it, but as Willie might have it, one can't have f***ing everything.

MovieStyle on 11/25/2016

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