Bad Santa 2

"You reek of whiskey. You know the rules and your flouting them."

Filmology Rating: 1.5 out of 4

Rude, crude, and drunken Willie Soke (Billy Bob Thornton) is back at it again with Bad Santa 2. With his angry little sidekick Marcus and Willies long lost terrible mother (Kathy Bates), they decide to knock off a Chicago charity on Christmas Eve. Will Willie really follow through or will the sliver of humanity he has left be saved by the chubby and cheery Thurman Merman.

The original Bad Santa is one of my favorite holiday films. It has great story, fun characters, and that perfect blend of over the top raunchy badness mixed with great writing to actually pull it off….. This was not the case with Bad Santa 2. While I did laugh hysterically at times, I cannot say in good conscious that this was a good movie.

While the first Bad Santa was raunchy, crude, and extremely vulgar, it worked. This was a highly original film that became an instant Christmas classic. This sequel was none of those things. While it was great to see Willie and Thurman Merman again, this film wasn’t anything special. It didn’t really offer anything new that was worthwhile and improved the film. They brought in Willies mom as something new but that was VERY hit or miss. She offers something different but the different was NOT good. She had a few decent jokes but her character was flat our awful. (Plus her character made the ending very predictable) This not so different feeling was my biggest flaw throughout the film. Speaking of different…..how about you change up the jokes throughout the film? Some of the jokes were recycled over and over and over and over again until what was funny became so repetitive that it ruined the humor.

When the best thing about the sequel is the returning of the cast and nothing else, you know you have a problem. Bad Santa 2 needed to focus on other qualities to make it a well-rounded film instead of just focusing on its returning characters. Relying on the audiences fond memories of its returning cast to propel this film forward should not be the focus because in this case, it wasn’t enough to save the film. I wanted something fresh and different with the same feeling of the original. Sadly, this was just not the case no matter how much I wanted it to be. This could have been achieved with another few edits of the script where they really thought about what they were doing.

Bad Santa 2 felt a lot like Zoolander 2. We have original films that became classics, and then we have sequels that fell so incredibly short what it should have been. Yes this movie will offer some great laughs but it is smothered with a lot of bad as well. This could have and should have been so much better.

Rating: Skip It 

-Nick