A mall Santa and his “elf” rob department stores after a long day of hearing children’s Christmas lists. After a particularly good score, Billy Bob Thornton vows to stop his Bad Santa ways and head on down to retire in Miami like the good drunk he is. And he does. It’s just that he’s still a miserable SOB whose only skill is taking things that aren’t his.
Bad Santa is a proud raunchy comedy, sparking an alarming trend in holiday films. At the time (2003) it held the record for most profanities in a Christmas film: 300, over half which are fucks.
Weirdly, both Bill Murray and Jack Nicholson hoped for the role before committing to other projects. Billy Bob stepped into the title role (which was translated as “Santa is a Pervert” in the Czech Republic) and to this day he lists the filming as one of only 3 time periods he’d care to revisit (the other two being the Alamo, and 1979, when he worked for the Arkansas Highway Department. He’s a weird guy.).
Anyway, Bad Santa and his conman elf get back into business in Arizona, where the fly in their ointment is a bullied chubby kid whose family would make a great mark if only he wasn’t so endearing. Cloris Leachman, who plays the kid’s uncredited Grandma, is the only high point of the film. I watched this when it was new and didn’t care for it so colour me surprised to learn that there’s a sequel out in theatres, because apparently someone wanted that.
What I didn’t want was to see John Ritter sweating away in this last embarrassing role, or Bernie Mac constipated and not much else, but what I REALLY didn’t want to see was a Gilmore Girl awkwardly folded into the front seat of a shitbox car screaming “Fuck me, Santa!” I have recently spent time with the Gilmore Girls revival on Netflix but I have no urge to find out how much badder this Santa can get. It should be noted that Lauren Graham is NOT back for Bad Santa 2 but Oscar winner Octavia Spencer is, and she’s joined by Oscar winner Kathy Bates. Mysteries abound.
appearing as the PTA mom who’s about to make Lacey Chabert’s life even more unbearable, as if being exiled to Ohio wasn’t bad enough. Now she has to put up with some old rival from high school one-upping her and flaunting the lifestyle that dentistry bought her. Some very talented directors have occasionally elicited some not-terrible performances from Carey (I’m thinking of Precious here, and I’m not sure what else) but whoever directed this monstrosity is clearly cowed by her. She’s more wooden than a nutcracker and she’s making hand gestures like she’s Celine Dion, live in concert.
On a snowy Sunday afternoon, Jay and I found ourselves alone in a theatre watching Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk. Having just been reminded on the way to the theatre that this was two time Oscar-winning director Ang Lee’s latest, I thought it was particularly odd for the theatre to be empty, even accounting for the fact that Fantastic Beasts was playing simultaneously on four or five other screens at the multiplex. But by the end of the film I got it. This is just a terrible movie. We shouldn’t have been there either.
of Destiny’s Child so don’t get your hopes up, Beyhive. 
wrong. But you know what I mean: usually a pretty blonde will linger with some glamorous kind of cancer that makes you pale but otherwise untouched. Colon cancer is a mother fucker. I mean, you wouldn’t know it from the movie. She even keeps all her hair! But she does get to suffer the indignity of the old camera up the wazoo trick, and has to admit to cute guys that she’s bleeding in her poop. So that’s kind of wonderful. A laugh riot, if you will. At least that’s what they’re striving for. In reality, the movie’s quite tone deaf.
dying wish. And of course her oncologist happens to be dreamy Gael Garcia Bernal. But there are even worse travesties than this afoot. First, as she lays dying, Marley talks to “God” (Whoopi Goldberg), who apparently is in the business of granting 3 wishes, like a genie. Even more egregious is Peter Dinklage, who pops up as a little person hooker whose nickname is – you guessed it – A Little Bit of Heaven. Because when the jokes about butt cancer dry up, why not make a joke out of someone’s sexuality? Ugh.
Year Old Virgin, and the fact that Jane Lynch is in both is just a painful reminder that this subject actually CAN be funny, should be funny, and in fact probably took a lot of effort to screw up this badly. How much effort, you ask? Well, by my count: there are 2 credited with “story by” and FIVE credited with screenwriting. Five! All dudes, naturally. Dudes who like visual jokes about morning wood and sneaky semen. And that doesn’t even count the guy who wrote the book, you know, the REAL guy that this actually happened to.
Continuing the “proud” tradition of 
the witless driver of an armoured money truck whose terrible relationship with fiancée Kate McKinnon makes it all too easy for him to fall for coworker Kristen Wiig who manipulates him into working with her confederate, Owen Wilson, who thinks a heist is in order. Galifianakis will do all of the work under the guise of love but will receive little to no reward if Wilson has anything to do with it – he’s got contract killer Jason Sudeikis after him and only the law (Leslie Jones) has any chance of intervening.
only laughed once the entire movie – and it was post-credits, in the blooper reel, not even at a joke that got edited out, but at Zach Galifianakis accidentally hitting his head on a swing set (I console myself that it made Kate McKinnon laugh too, before she checked that he was okay). Only babies laugh at people getting bonked on the head, but I had been in a comedy desert for the past hour and a half and I was parched for laughter.
drugged out of their minds” – models, of course. So how do we punish such a misogynist? We turn him into a woman of course. Yup, it’s an identity swap movie, and there’s not even a cute cat in it to make it remotely palatable. And the worst part is that once “Sam” is turned into a woman, the misogynist bullcrap is ramped up because it’s somehow funny to have a cute girl spouting utter shit. I might, might, look past this if there was anything remotely non-disgusting in the script but in fact, all the men are dogs and all the women are shrews. Like real life! And then there’s all the implausible bits.
ASSHOLES WATCHING MOVIES 