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Bad Santa 2

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Bob Hoose

Movie Review

Willie Sokes makes for a bad Santa.

In truth, since he’s a bile-filled, urine-soaked drunk who has anger management issues, Willie makes for something of a despicable Santa. He’s a crook, a liar and an all-around lout, the equivalent of a holiday eggnog with a rotten egg and a curdled nog. But hey, we’ve all got bills to pay. And for wretched Willie, that means slipping back into a ratty beard and a red-and-white suit.

Sure, Willie had other plans for the day. But they required an actual gas oven rather than the electric one some idiot put in his apartment: Suicide by electric oven ain’t an easy evening.

So when his former elfin helpmate Marcus shows up with a plan for another criminal caper—one that involves Willie slipping into his Santa suit again—Willie reluctantly acquiesces. Well, he vomits, urinates on the carpet and flops into the car, anyway.

The mark this go ’round is a Chicago charity called Giving City. Their take could be massive.

There’s only one real problem …

No, it’s not that they’ll be stealing from needy children. Don’t be silly. It’s that Willie’s mom, Sunny, is in on the theft, too.

If there’s one person who Willie detests more vehemently than his diminutive partner Marcus, it’s his bloated-carcass monster of a mother. He’d rather watch her suffer with some rancid terminal disease in a foul hole of her own choosing than lift a single finger to help her steal money. For that matter, he’d rather see the charity’s homeless brats get the cash than let her touch a dime. And he hates kids.

But then again, cash is cash. And there’s booze to be swilled, people to take advantage of and fetish-obsessed women to sexually abuse this time of year. It’s Christmas after all. So Willie agrees to join his mother’s crew.

(Maybe he can off the old bag after they make the score.)

Positive Elements

Slim pickin’s here.

There is this 20-year-old guy named Thurman (a kid in the original Bad Santa film) who has the mental acuity of a child and who tags after Willie, seeing him as something of a father figure. This innocent individual has at least a small emotional impact on Willie (enough, at least, to motivate Willie to warn him away from sexual predators).

And, at times, we see Willie pause long enough to seemingly recognize just how vile and loathsome a person he really is. But that insight never makes him step toward any kind of change.

Spiritual Elements

Thurman and children in a choir sing Christmas carols, including Joy to the World and Silent Night. Thurman talks of his deceased mother being “in Jesus’ house.”

On other fronts, Willie makes crude and very offensive references to several biblical stories, including a terrible twist on the “Immaculate Conception.” He also speaks demeaningly about Jesus, and he beats a man with large figurines from a nativity scene.

Sexual Content

In the movie’s opening sequence, Willie leers at a busty woman exposing most of one breast while she publically breast-feeds her child. The camera makes its own slow-motion examination, as well. And while that might be the lowest sexual point in some comedies, it’s the high water mark in this film.

From there Willie, his mom and Marcus talk about and participate in numerous sleazy activities—including multiple party masturbation, anal sex, clothed erections, bestiality, prostitution, group sex, and other even more perverse sexual interactions. A number of sexual interactions are seen, but are kept at least partially hidden (under clothes or covers) or kept just outside the camera’s view. For instance, Willie and the Giving City charity organizer Diane have multiple realistic-looking and sounding sexual encounters in different locations—from a garbage-filled alleyway to a Christmas tree lot—her hiked up skirt and his Santa pants are always strategically placed.

The conversations are delivered in the rawest, most crude terms imaginable, including one scene where Willie arranges for Thurman to lose his virginity with a prostitute. As she removes her clothes, Willie crassly describes what Thurman should do to his own genitalia and to hers. Descriptions of male and female genital size and shape abound.

A woman has a strong fetish for physically filthy old men. The camera lingers on cleavage whenever possible, along with a variety of tightly-clad and bare backsides. At film’s end we’re shown snapshots of a man repeatedly putting his scrotum on another unwilling man’s face and in his mouth.

Violent Content

A trio of people hold each other at gunpoint. Several people are shot at close range. In one case a man’s blood smears across an ice-skating rink as he’s dragged. Another wounded men is run over by a car. (We see him later, bandaged up and in a hospital bed.)

Willie punches his elderly mother in the face. She punches him in the mouth, as well. Marcus and Willie fight and thump each other around.

Crude or Profane Language

Language here is profane to the max, tallying well over 150 f-words and nearly 60 s-words and some 30 or 40 misuses of God’s and Jesus’ names (over 25 combinations of “God” with “d–n”). Other cracks in the dialogue are stuffed with multiple uses of “d–n,” “a–,” ‘h—,” “b–ch” and lots of crude references to male and female genitalia.

Drug and Alcohol Content

Willie generally has a cigarette in his mouth and a bottle or glass of booze in his hand. He is obviously stone drunk on at least a couple occasions. Diane takes Willie to an AA meeting, but instead of guiding him to sobriety, their mutual alcoholic background drags her back into rancid, torrid activity. Willie’s mother is a heavy drinker and smoker herself, and numerous other characters regularly toss back some hard alcohol or beer.

Other Negative Elements

Willie attempts suicide, hanging himself from a light fixture that eventually breaks, sending him crashing to the floor. Marcus’ status as a “midget” is repeatedly joked about in very offensive ways.

Conclusion

“There’s a certain level of raunch to everyone’s conversations that is just part of being funny,” director Mark Waters said of his film’s abundance of crude visuals and language in an IMDb posted interview. ” … R-rated movies are essentially just the way people actually talk. The way adults get along with each other.”

Now, I’m not sure which gathering of real-world raunchy revelers the director is referring to, but it’s definitely not a crowd most of us would want to spend our holidays with. Especially if this, his self-labled “anti-Christmas” flick, is any indication of that group’s conversations. The fact is, Bad Santa 2 is truly one of the most repulsive and detestable movies ever put on film.

This isn’t just an anti-Christmas pic, either. It’s anti-enjoyable. You could definitely classify this deplorable pic as the “anti-” to any and all positives in your life—from family to humor to … thought. It’s a movie that tries way too hard to be obscene and offensive and, regrettably, that’s about the only thing it succeeds at.

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Bob Hoose

After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.