Look who’s back – Billy Bob Thornton brings foul-mouthed, self-loathing Willie back to our screens for 2016’s Bad Santa 2, slipping back into the role like a comfy pair of shoes. This time, the vulgar, boorish store Santa re-teams with underhanded elf accomplice Marcus (Tony Cox) to knock over a Chicago charity on Christmas Eve. Joining the fun again is Thurman (Brett Kelly) who is now 21 and Sunny (Kathy Bates) Willie’s car crash of a mum who turns out to be even more of a total bastard than her boy.
Willie appears to have learned very little from part 1 and is still a drunken mess, obsessed with boobs and failing at every job he gets. Even though Marcus tried to murder him last time out, Willie’s that much of a washout that it’s not a huge stretch that he’d work with the guy again.
Heartwarmingly, he still keeps in touch with Thurman who, even though he can legally drink now, is still a bewilderingly strange dude, explained to be “pretty high on the spectrum”. Of course, Willie’s idea of looking out for him is to get him a plus-sized hooker for his 21st to “pop his cherry”. It’s pretty grim.
For no good reason, other than the film requires some sort of reason to feel guilty about his misdeeds, the kid follows him to Chicago and hangs about saying weird stuff. Bates, as Willie’s nightmarishly rough mum, is on winning form and hasn’t been this funny since The Waterboy or this fearsome since Misery, even if in real life she’s only seven years older than Thornton.
It's great to have the gang back, but the film does follow the law of diminishing returns. This is just as lewd and jet black as its predecessor, but it’s been thirteen years since the unholy shock to the system that was part 1. The shock value is not as strong as it was, despite some even cruder gags – this one features some eye-watering close-ups of ball-sacks and plenty of jokes about ‘tea-bagging.’
It's still a lot of fun, though. I find I enjoy this a lot more now than I did when I saw it when it was first released. Maybe I’ve watched so many substandard Christmas comedies so far that this one now seems far superior? Who knows?
This one essentially ‘re-gifts’ the joke from the first film - that this guy should never be allowed to be Santa - but when the joke’s this good it seems churlish to complain. It's a bit like getting a yummy Toblerone every Christmas – it still tastes good, even if the element of surprise has long gone.
The jokes are good, but just not as fresh. It’s as if they couldn’t think of anything new for Willie to do, so they brought in his mum to remind us that it’s even funnier when pensioners are the ones swearing like sailors.
A bit of the heart from the original film seems to be missing too. Willie’s partial redemption at the end of part 1 feels redundant if he’s right back to being a boozy Christmas-spoiling crook. Luckily, the kid is on hand to help keep this bad Santa’s tiny sliver of humanity in check, though I’m not sure if anyone learns much.
After weeks and weeks of festive cheese, it’s definitely been a welcome change of scene to wallow in a story where almost every character is unrelentingly mean to each other, sticking two fingers up at a lot of the hollow bullshit of the season. It seems to be a running theme of most of these ‘adult’ films – once the children are off to bed, dreaming of sugarplums or whatever, the grown-ups can take a breather, say “to hell with all this!” for a bit and indulge in some sordid, naughtiness.
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