Bad Santa After seemingly taking an age to come out in British cinema and another age to come out on DVD, Bad Santa, made and released to US cinema's in 2003 finally made it's DVD bow in 2005 (I'll reckon the fact it's a Christmas movie). So it was certainly a long wait for anybody who didn't happen to import in the meantime. There have been a number of classic Christmas movies over the years, two of them: Gremlins and Die Hard are certainly not your typical Christmas movies and now you can add Bad Santa to that list, the filthy, fouled mouthed, filthy bastard child of Disney (Disney owned Miramax financed it) is not your typical holiday movie, and I forgot to mention it's absolutely hilarious. Bad Santa is the story of two conmen who go on a road trip to malls dressed as Santa, Willie (Billy Bob Thornton) and his elf, Marcus (Tony Cox). Rather than spreading good cheer, the duo's motive is to rob each establishment, a strategy that becomes complicated when they encounter a loney 8-year-old fat boy (Brett Kelly) who teaches them the true meaning of Christmas. The plot despite the obviousness of Willie eventually growing to like the ever likeabel and overtrusting boy and his grandma, never goes too sickly sweet and just when you think it might, Willie goes ahead and does something else distgusting. The cast are brilliant, Thornton and Cox spar well with each other, whilst Kelly who is credited simply as The Kid, is the perfect counterbalance to Thornton, forever naivé, other strong casting includes Lauren Graham, Thornton's love interest with a Santa fixation ("Fuck me, Santa!) and John Ritter, in his final screen role as the uptight Mall manager.

I highly recommend Bad Santa which is alright to watch the rest of the year, just don't put it on for any little kids, they'll be asking a lot of weird questions.

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