By Katrina Deisler
Billy Bob Thornton, Tony Cox, and Brett Kelly are back in the sequel to the 2003 comedy, Bad Santa, (directed by Mark Waters of Mean Girls). The sequel premiered thirteen years after the original, so naturally there were some differences. One of the most notable being that Thurman Merman (“The Kid”) is now a 21-year-old man as opposed to a younger child. The cast is also joined by Kathy Bates who stars as Willie’s (Thornton) mother, Sunny.
The film opens with Willie losing yet another job, and hopeless and out of options, he decides to take Marcus Skidmore (Cox) up on an offer to make millions in a scam, despite the fact that Marcus tried to kill Willie in the first film. The duo heads to Chicago where they meet up with Sunny and devise the details of their scheme which includes dressing up as Santas and ringing bells to collect for charity. As you can imagine, Willie gets himself into plenty of trouble along the way, sleeping with inappropriate partners, lying, stealing, and drinking his way out of any problem he encounters.
After learning Willie has left, Thurman (Kelly) heads to Chicago to find him, wearing nothing but shorts and a t-shirt. His presence complicates the scheme at first, but eventually causes Willie’s heart to soften as he warms up to the young man, who idolizes Willie.
The film definitely had some hilarious moments, but was quite heartbreaking in others. I was expecting to be laughing start to finish, but the film’s darker humour wasn’t quite my cup of tea. The film’s ending was surprising, but ended with a rather heartwarming scene about the importance of spending the holidays with the people you love, not quite what I was expecting from a dirty holiday film.
Bad Santa 2 is out in cinemas now