2003 · black-comedy · holiday · heist
Bad Santa
Directed by Terry Zwigoff1h 32m2003
You'd better watch out - Willie T. Soke 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 wisecracking store detective, a sexy bartender, and a kid who's convinced Willie is the real Santa Claus.
Our read: Bad Santa (2003) reads as a neutral, kinetic, grounded black-comedy · holiday · heist entry — measured in intensity, intimate in scope, measured in temperature, ambivalent in outlook.
Neutral, kinetic, measured black-comedy / holiday, grounded in texture. Ambivalent, intimate, measured.
- brisk
- intimate
- funny
Watching Bad Santa tonight? Spin for your lens.
Everyone on the couch spins once and gets one craft to watch for. After the credits, compare what you caught.
Your lens for tonight
?
Everyone on the couch gets one craft to watch for. Spin the wheel to get yours. Sound on: the narrator reads your mission.
More info & search links
How Bad Santa feels to watch.
Each axis is scored by hand, not from votes or genre averages. The bar uses the film's own colours.
What watching it is actually like.
“You want a vicious holiday comedy with a surprisingly soft emotional center.”
Skip it tonight — Foul-mouthed cynicism is a bad match for family anywhere near the couch.
Eight films that feel like this one.
Closest in the twelve-axis space, not “people also liked”. All films like Bad Santa, with why →
Discussion
Make it a movie night.
Pick a mood, get a film the whole couch will enjoy, and give everyone something to watch for.
Pick tonight's film →