TheRetroCritic

In-between directing more arty/trendy flicks, Terry Zwigoff tried his hand at a somewhat more commercial effort with Bad Santa , a Christmas movie with a difference. The main difference being that our "bad Santa" is a shady, foul-mouthed, boozing thief who pisses his pants. Billy Bob Thornton and Tony Cox's Christmas tradition in this movie is posing as a mall Santa and Elf then robbing the whole place after the busiest shopping day of the year. Unfortunately, Willie (Thornton) is struggling to keep both his alcoholism and his sex addiction under control so he soon becomes a liability in grave danger of messing up the whole plan. Along the way, Willie meets Sue (Lauren Graham), a girl with a Santa fetish and they begin a relationship of sorts. He also meets a clingy overweight young boy amusingly called Thurman Merman, played by an appropriately wide-eyed Brett Kelly, who, for whatever reason, believes Willie to be the real Santa Claus. And although the kid annoys

If anyone was going to save Christmas, it had to be Ernest P. Worrell. Those of you unfamiliar with Jim Varney's somewhat cult creation may be missing out on some fun times, though Ernest Goes To Africa was pretty brutal... Yeah, I watched that. Ernest Saves Christmas , luckily, is one of the good ones. Not only because Varney once again delivers his own brand of rubber-faced, fast-talkin', cartoonish madness but also because Douglas Seale makes one loveable Santa and adds a lot of heart to an otherwise purely slapsticky farce. The film sees Santa search for a worthy successor and seeing as Ernest, who kindly drives Santa around in a cab, is all about that Christmas spirit, there's no better candidate to help Santa achieve his goal. Except maybe the elves who actually do have their own subplot in this movie, as do the reindeers, believe it or not. Actually, come to think of it, this movie has more subplots than it does have a plot as Noelle Parker becomes Ernest&#