Badder Santa (Unrated Widescreen Edition)
by Terry Zwigoff
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DVD details
Actor: Bernie Mac, Billy Bob Thornton, John Ritter, Lauren Graham, Tony CoxDirector: Terry Zwigoff
Brand: BUENA VISTA HOME VIDEO
Producer: Bob Weinstein
Producer: Brad Weston
Producer: David Crockett
Producer: Ethan Coen
Producer: Harvey Weinstein
Writer: Glenn Ficarra
Writer: John Requa
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled)
Format: Anamorphic, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 91 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2004-06-22
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Miramax Home Entertainment
DVD Reviews of Badder Santa (Unrated Widescreen Edition)
DVD Review: Good flick.
Summary: 4 Stars
I enjoyed this movie quite a bit. Definitely the dark side of the holidays, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing...just a Bad Santa!!!DVD Review: Perfect role for Billy Bob
Summary: 4 Stars
I feel slightly guilty giving this movie 4 stars after seeing some of the other reviewer posts but this one made me laugh. When I think Billy Bob Thornton, this is the 1st movie that comes to mind. If you've ever laughed at the idea of an alcoholic, bummed out Santa, this is the movie for you.
With the poor script writing that has plagued the Hollywood for well over the past 10 years with prime examples in SNL and TV sitcoms and of course numerous movies, it is refreshing to know that some writers still have it and are not afraid to take the risk.
B+
DVD Review: Need region code next to DVD.
Summary: 1 Stars
Can't play DVD in Austrlia. I bought it when I was new to Amazon and I would loose money sending it back for a refund. As the page was emailed to a Australian address, I thought I would be able to play it. I have learnd the hard way. It would be good if only 'any region' Blu Ray titles could be emailed out to those in region 2.DVD Review: Best Santa movie, ever!
Summary: 5 Stars
There's more to the "mall Santa photo" business than meets the eye! Kudos to the writers of this film, and to Billy Bob's performance as a bitter, alcoholic, safe-cracker, playing Santa for the season for alterior motives.
I've been in the "mall Santa photo" business for 30 years, and the small details that the writers and director put into this movie have me rolling on the floor, everytime I watch it, which is at least 20 times every December.
The deterioration of Billy Bob's Santa outfit, from the start of the movie to the end, is a perfect analogy to our attitude about the season, and the setting for the story is right out of every nightmare that I ever had.
Probably too rauchy for a lot of people, both in language and sexual situations, but for me.....I raise my shot glass in homage to the genius that is this movie!!!
DVD Review: Ho ho ho .... ho?
Summary: 5 Stars
Willie (Billy Bob Thornton) does Santa at Christmastime, and he hates it. Hates kids and having to pretend to be nice to them; hates having to be sober (and rarely succeeding at it) for hours; and hates his dwarf partner Marcus (Tony Cox) with whom he rips off the department stores after hours in order to make enough money to live on for the next 11 months. It's a great scheme for a lazy good-for-nothing like Willie, except that he is so far around the bend that even focusing for a few weeks on a big job is increasingly beyond him. He decides to split after the job that opens the film and head south, but by the time the next holiday comes up and Marcus calls him from Phoenix, he needs it. But this time he develops a love interest in a local bartender with a Santa fetish (Lauren Graham) and ends up becoming a very, very reluctant father figure to a geeky, put-upon rich kid (Brett Kelly), so you know things are going to turn out differently than they usually do...
Director Terry Zwigoff's 4th feature follows very much in the vein of his previous films GHOST WORLD and CRUMB in presenting people on the margins of society who really have no interest whatsoever in being part of the mainstream culture - though in this case Willie and Marcus are more like parodies or dark reflections of the American consumer and service sector employee than rebels against it. They rip off large stores on the biggest shopping day of the year, and get away with it year after year, but are incapable or uninterested in creating anything meaningful for themselves out of it. The film doesn't really go very far into exploring this dark underbelly of the American dream though, preferring to keep to the level of nasty, foul-mouthed and outrageous humor, and it works awfully well doing that - in fact, Thornton and Cox elevate this to one of the nastiest, funniest antidotes to traditional Christmas cheer I've ever seen. Much as I like SCROOGED, it's got nothing on BAD SANTA.
As with Zwigoff's earlier films, the focus here is entirely on the characters - the director doesn't seem all that interested in visual aesthetics (well, unless slightly grimy and boring mall-suburbia is an "aesthetic), but the characters are well-drawn and acted enough that I certainly wasn't worrying about the beauty of the shots. Willie is never lovable, he's really a prick throughout up until the somewhat predictable, sentimental finish - but he's also funny in a mordant, bleak and sad way. He's been put down by life apparently (assuming we can believe him), and what he's learned from that is to fight back and ignore society's rules. Marcus is more controlled and disciplined, but in the end an even less appealing person, and it's very much to the credit of all involved (I should mention screenwriters Glenn Ficarra and John Requa here) that he never becomes a "little man" cliche and is never made sympathetic in the slightest. He's just an agressive, make-a-buck-anyway-anyhow hustler who will use his height and race (black) to his advantage anyway he can without any real regard for morality - in other words, he's really no better or worse than most of the other characters in the film.
The film does, as I mentioned, get a little bit sappy at the end, which I didn't really mind though I think it does undermine the ferociousness of the humor and characterizations somewhat. Bernie Mac and John Ritter also appear in terrific smaller roles here but both (especially Ritter) are I think a little underutilized; in the end I think the writing and acting was just good enough that I wanted to see more of the same, and a wrap-up that was less cliched (though it could have been vastly worse). Still, not too much to complain about, and this ends up as one of the funniest films I've seen in the past several years. Ho ho ho and a bottle of Old Grandad.
DVD NOTES: The supplements aren't particularly special here - a few outtakes/deleted scenes that don't really add much, a gag reel, and a short, pretty standard behind-the-scenes doc that's worth watching once I guess.
Description of Badder Santa (Unrated Widescreen Edition)
Hollywood favorites Billy Bob Thornton (THE ALAMO), Bernie Mac (MR. 3000), and John Ritter (TV's 8 SIMPLE RULES FOR DATING MY TEENAGE DAUGHTER) kick it up a notch in this unrated version of the outrageous comedy hit BAD SANTA. You'd better watch out -- Santa Claus Willie T. Stokes (Thornton) is coming to town and he doesn't care if you've been naughty or nice. Willie's favorite holiday tradition is to fill his sacks with loot lifted from shopping malls across the country. But this year his plot gets derailed by a wise-cracking store detective (Mac), a sexy bartender (Lauren Graham -- TV's GILMORE GIRLS), and a kid who's convinced Willie is the real Santa Claus! You're sure to believe in BADDER SANTA: THE UNRATED VERSION -- once you experience this longer, funnier, and more explicit motion picture!Instantly qualifying as a perennial cult favorite, Bad Santa is as nasty as it wants to be, and there's something to be said for comedy without compromise. The Coen brothers conceived the basic idea and served as executive producers, but it's director Terry Zwigoff (Crumb, Ghost World) who brings his unique affinity for losers and outcasts to the twisted tale of Willie T. Stokes (Billy Bob Thornton), a hard-drinking, chain-smoking, foul-mouthed sexaholic safe-cracker who targets a different department store every holiday season, playing Santa while he cases the joint with his dwarf elf-partner Marcus (Tony Cox). With comedic support from Bernie Mac, Lauren Graham, Cloris Leachman, and John Ritter in his final film, Thornton milks the lowbrow laughs with a slovenly lack of sentiment, warming Bad Santa's pickled heart just enough to please a chubby misfit (Brett Kelly, hilariously deadpan) who may or may not be mentally challenged. As dry as an arid martini and blacker than morning-after coffee, Bad Santa is an instant cure for yuletide schmaltz, and if you think this appropriately R-rated comedy is suitable for kids, your parenting skills are no better than Willie's. --Jeff Shannon
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