By Emilio Frenk
Director: Mark Waters
Cast: Billy Bob Thornton, Tony Cox, Kathy Bates, Christina Hendricks, Brett Kelly, Jenny Zigrino, Jeff Skowro, Mike Starr and Octavia Spencer.
Rating: Poor
Academy Award Winner, Billy Bob Thornton, is back portraying Willie Soke, the drunk thief for a second time in “Bad Santa 2” and compared with the first film released in 2003, this was a huge dissapointment.
Safe Robber Willie Soke (Billy Bob Thornton) meets with his former partner Marcus Skidman (Tony Cox) who just got out of jail for stealing money in a shopping mall in Phoenix, Arizona.
He has a proposal for Willie to steal a charity in Chicago in Christmas Eve. At the beginning Willie doesn’t accept since Marcus betrayed him before; at the end he accepts on doing the job.
Once they are in Chicago, Willie will have an encounter with his mother Sunny (Kathy Bates) who he hates her guts since she was abusive to him when Willie was a child. Now she will be in the score and they will have to split the loot. To make things worst, the boy who annoyed Willlie , Thurman Merman (Brett Kelly) now a sandwich maker comes into action and he will face a major problem.
Now Willie not only has to steal the charity on Christmas Eve but he will need to find a way to get rid of Thurman before he gets him into trouble for a second time.
“Bad Santa 2” had moments of laughter but it was way to far from the first film which not only was funny but had a lot of heart on it.
This film not only was repetitive, but it was too predictable. The script this time was written by Johnny Rosenthal and Shauna Cross and the it had potential to be a good holiday movie but this wasn’t the case.
The movie is to vulgar and it was cheap and foul. This time Billy Bob Thornton was everything but funny compared to the first film where he was hilarious and the chemistry with Tony Cox this time it didn’t work.
The movie was boring and there were moments that I didn’t laugh a singlebit. The only moments when I laughed is when Tony Cox had a good gag but that was preety much it.
The direction by Mark Waters who did Mean Girls which is a very good comedy didn’t deliver the goods this time. The execution by Waters was not precise and he tried a huge effort on directing Thornton to be funny but here it was not the case.
The original “Bad Santa” is a good holiday movie and a good comedy. The difference is the first movie had very good comedy actors like John Ritter and Bernie Mac, who unfortanetely passed away. They both were very funny and here you had Kathy Bates, who not only is a fantastic Actress but an Academy Award Winner herself. This time you even had more goods in terms of cast but if the story is weak and the screenplay is not a good one, there was no way this movie was going to go that far.
With that being said, “Bad Santa 2” is one of the worst movies of this year and please only see the first one because this one is going to make you waste your time and money.