⭐⭐ (Poor)

Director: Mark Waters
Starring: Billy Bob Thornton, Kathy Bates, Tony Cox, Christina Hendricks, Brett Kelly, Ryan Hansen, Jenny Zigrino
Certificate: 15
Run Time: 92 mins

Bad Santa is one of my favourite Christmas films, subverting the genre by essentially being a raunchy and shocking anti-Christmas film, with a brilliant central performance by Billy Bob Thornton. This is the latest comedy sequel no one really wanted 13 years later, which more often than not, tend to tarnish the original – take this year’s Zoolander 2 or Dumb and Dumber To as disappointing examples. The one exception to the rule that comes to mind is Anchorman 2 which managed to be better the original but Adam McKay is a top-tier comedy director. ‘Bad Santa 2’ has Mark Waters in the director’s chair, who has made some pretty good films such as Freaky Friday, but he doesn’t scream as the obvious choice for a rude sequel.

It pains me to say that Bad Santa 2 is a lazy, puerile, mean-spirited sequel. It’s not funny at all save for a few one liners that got a faint chuckle and the film really got on my nerves as it progressed. On the narrative front, it’s pretty ropey but at least Billy Bob Thornton gives a good performance again. It’s just an awful shame he’s equipped with such a bad script.

The performances in ‘Bad Santa 2’ are really lacking other than Billy Bob Thornton and Tony Cox, who make the most of their bad lines. It’s such a shame to see Billy Bob Thornton’s career take another hit because he’s such a versatile actor who is always the standout in everything he is in, although I was still invested in his character. Kathy Bates’s casting seemed like a great idea on paper but she is an annoying and hateful character in the film. Of course, Bad Santa 2 needs to be vulgar and mean-spirited but her character is just hateful and I couldn’t empathise with her at all. Christina Hendricks is another casualty  and I found her character’s decisions baffling and stupid – not stupid as in funny, just plain stupid.

Bad Santa 2 is devoid of both story and laughs and has a total lack of heart and emotion – qualities the original film had in abundance. It’s as if the screenwriters have spent 30 minutes crafting a series of sequences before picking up the cheque. The story is so poorly constructed and the ending in particular is rushed and sudden – there are many poor films where an ending has been able to rescue it but here it’s the opposite – but here, I was seething and annoyed with how lazy the story choices are here. The score by Lyle Workman also compliments the film in its laziness and is completely unmemorable and Theo van de Sande’s cinematography detracts from the dirty, grimy look of the first film and the whole film has this made-for-television sheen about it.

Overall, Bad Santa 2 is an extraordinarily lazy sequel. It’s not quite as offensive as some other comedy sequels because it doesn’t try and turn the humour up to 11, but instead  is just painfully flat with no plot. I found myself getting angry during the film and no-one laughed during the performance apart from a couple of one-liners near the beginning. It is Billy Bob Thornton’s performance that just about single-handedly manages to carry this film from a 1 to a 2 and it’s such a shame to see his career take another hit which he doesn’t need. But this puerile, lazy film can be thrown away and burnt on the ever-increasing list of bad comedy sequels – Bad Santa 2 is not the Christmas treat it should have been.

 (Poor)