Bad Santa

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

Much like "School Of Rock," Bad Santa salvages a tired, paint-by-numbers formula by resisting it every step of the way, stubbornly refusing to stop its juvenile fun until the last possible moment.

Dallas Observer Robert Wilonsky

As surreal as it is obscene, as clever as it is crude. It plays like some raw offspring of underground comix and the comedies of the 1920s.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

The movie is -- how can I say this? -- funny as hell. It's like an old Mad magazine "Scenes We'd Like to See" put together by someone on crystal meth, with a vicious streak, an existentialist streak and no mercy anywhere in his soul and only the tiniest flinch at the end, which is probably, sigh, the best way to end.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

Suddenly, you're looking at life in his (Thornton's) jaundiced way and laughing with a sense of vicarious liberation, even when he says the most outrageous things -- to children, no less. And I daresay you can still recover your holiday spirit when you're through laughing.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

Suddenly, you're looking at life in his (Thornton's) jaundiced way and laughing with a sense of vicarious liberation, even when he says the most outrageous things -- to children, no less. And I daresay you can still recover your holiday spirit when you're through laughing.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

But Bad Santa does feature one last turn from the late John Ritter as a twittery department-store manager (his name, Mr. Chipeska, is a stroke of brilliance that I still can't quite put my finger on).

USA Today Mike Clark

This is a filmmaker who instinctively knows that a shot of Santa sitting at a bar as Ricky Nelson sings Jingle Bells will be no-frills funny.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

Gloriously funky in the good old meaning of the term. Its vulgarity may be offensive, but it's also pungent and real, and it fuels some ferocious humor.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

Won't appeal to everyone, of course, particularly those who blush easily. And parents who take children to see it deserve to have their heads examined. But for those who don't mind a little bile in their eggnog, it's the perfect antidote to all that prefab Christmas cheer.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

A demented, twisted, unreasonably funny work of comic kamikaze style, starring Billy Bob Thornton as Santa in a performance that's defiantly uncouth.

Chicago Tribune Mark Caro

The foulest holiday movie I've ever seen -- and the funniest.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

It's a film for those people -- and they are legion -- who recoil in horror from the very notion of Christmas cheer. If you're in that crowd, and you know who you are, you'll love it.

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

My kind of Christmas movie--profane, subversive, and swarming with scuzzballs.

Time Richard Schickel

Not for everyone. The plot is full of holes, and its language is worse than it has to be. But it has some swell supporting performances and a lot of vulgar inventiveness, and best of all, it plugs into -- and electrifies -- the mostly unacknowledged grimness that lies just beneath our holiday cheer.

Newsweek David Ansen

Zwigoff doesn't hype up the gags, and his deliberately deadpan style gives even farfetched jokes an edge of reality.

Empire Adam Smith

A delightfully obscene alternative to the usual Christmas tosh.

Los Angeles Times Manohla Dargis

It unapologetically exults in its characters' glorious imperfection. It's good to know that oddballs, outcasts and people who don't look like Barbie and Ken still have a place in American movies and that not everyone in Hollywood pays lip service to the nice and polite.

The New York Times A.O. Scott

Takes all the Christmas season's bad vibes and converts them into an achingly funny and corrupt dark comedy.

The Hollywood Reporter Michael Rechtshaffen

Happens to be extremely funny -- at times sidesplittingly so -- thanks to Zwigoff's way with raw irreverence and Thornton's perfectly pitched, ready-for-anything performance.

Austin Chronicle Kimberley Jones

No doubt about it: Bad Santa is blasphemous. But, to borrow a phrase from another famous hedonist, Homer Simpson, it’s also sacrilicious.

San Francisco Chronicle C.W. Nevius

A tasteless, vulgar, savage assault against everything that is good and decent in the Christmas season. I think you are going to like it.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

An unrepentantly rude, anti-seasonal dish of malice and mischief. Director Terry Zwigoff works from a story that originated with the Coen brothers and passed through at least four writers, including him...The results may leave you aghast or breathless with laughter, but you won't be neutral.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

If you've had it with all that feel-good holiday sludge, hook up with the combustibly nasty Bad Santa. It could become a Christmas perennial for Scrooges of all ages.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

It has two modes: dark and darker, and dares to do some things with the Christmas motif that haven't been done since Norman Rene's "Reckless."

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

"Ghost World" director Terry Zwigoff, working with a depraved script by John Requa and Glenn Ficarra, has fashioned the sickest -- and funniest -- black comedy in years.

Variety Dennis Harvey

First-rate talent and a uniquely dyspeptic mood separate this effort from more routine, populist stabs at tasteless yukkage.

Slate David Edelstein

Billy Bob Thornton's performance is--there's no other word--beautiful.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

Without question, not for the children. It is, however, just the cup of rancid black-comedy eggnog for anyone fed up with holiday cheer in all its manifestations.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

I wanted to believe in Bad Santa. At least half of the time I did.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

Joel and Ethan Coen wrote the story, using the ancient gag of the toxic Santa as a vehicle for their patented brand of misanthropy; Zwigoff and company wring some laughs out of it, though the tone is uniformly mean and vulgar.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

Perhaps for Zwigoff, directing someone else's script, this was just a job of work. If not, the talent who made "Crumb" and "Ghost World "has now made his first movie mistake.

LA Weekly Scott Foundas

Gets stuck in a rut. Hearing Santa say “f---” isn't nearly as funny the 50th time as it is the first 49.

Village Voice Dennis Lim

Bad Santa is a one-joke film; to his credit, Thornton embodies that joke with vicious, vaguely insane conviction.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

A determinedly raunchy holiday comedy about a libidinous, larcenous and perpetually soused St. Nick with a nonstop potty mouth.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

Aspires to the devilish crudity and unfettered social commentary of South Park. But Zwigoff's direction lacks the exaggerated cartoonishness necessary.

TV Guide Ken Fox

The screenplay just isn't funny: Most jokes fall flat and just lie there in a pool of their own sick. And while Zwigoff's deadpan pacing was perfect for the wry, sophisticated humor of "Ghost World," here it's a comedy killer; that extra beat after each new outrage is just long enough for viewers to realize just how sad and disturbing it all is.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

Isn't up to much of anything besides pretending that swearwords and snot-nosed insults, served up by Santa with an almost institutional monotony, aren't just naughty. They're -- big joke! -- incorrect.

Film Threat K.J. Doughton

A frozen pile of reindeer droppings. The cinematic equivalent to passing a kidney stone, Zwigoff’s unholy foray into “dark comedy” gives us a suicidal, sociopathic drunk slinging swear words with a ferocity that would make Tony Montana wince.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

If you're addicted to Billy Bob Thornton's slovenly charm, and thrill to the prospect of watching him talk endlessly about his bodily functions and penchant for anal sex with obese women, this is your movie. If not, it's like 90 minutes in hell.