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Nov 23, 2016 By John McShane Web Exclusive

While a glance at Twitter would quickly remind you what a prolific year 2016 has been for celebrity deaths, it’s been a banner year for the resurrection of long-dormant film franchises. Taking all the wrong lessons from the breathtaking anomaly of Mad Max: Fury Road last year, Hollywood has given us new Zoolander, Barbershop, Big Fat Greek Wedding, Independence Day, and Bridget Jones films, all coming after at least a decade away from cinemas. Each was regarded as an amusing, inessential check-in with beloved characters at best and a puzzling, inessential cash grab at worst.

Add to that list Bad Santa 2, an intermittently amusing but ultimately misguided and woefully past-due follow-up to the 2003 holiday classic. After everyone has served their time for the events of the first film, Willie (Billy Bob Thornton) and Marcus (Tony Cox) reach a tense truce for the sake of One Last Job: robbing a corrupt Chicago charity with the help of Willie’s degenerate mother, Sunny (Kathy Bates). Needless to say, the score requires that Willie and Marcus dress up as Santa Claus and his elf, and that they use the distraction of the holiday to pull off said heist.

Taking over for original director Terry Zwigoff and writers Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, Mark Waters and writers Johnny Rosenthal and Shauna Cross identify what initially drew audiences to the first film without paying any attention to the bits that led people to keep revisiting it. Billy Bob Thornton cursing at children and talking about sex is funny, for stretches; but the off-kilter interactions between Willie and the all of the normal people taking him at face value is the heart of the movie. This is not the case in Bad Santa 2.

For example: in the first film, Willie’s demonstrated preference for anal sex is made funny by virtue of the late John Ritter’s expertly squeamish response to learning about it. In Bad Santa 2, ‘anal sex’ is the beginning and end of the joke, and it’s a joke that’s made repeatedly. In fact, it’s even given an origin story and a central role in the thieves’ heist-planning. So if you’re the person who came out of the first Bad Santa saying “It’s funny that he liked anal sex, but I wish I knew how long he’d liked it for, and I also wish his love for it played a more important role in the plot,” then you may be the audience for this sequel.

Thornton is responsible for most of the laughs to be had here, with a few others going to Cox, Bates, and Brett Kelly, who returns as a grown-up Thurman Merman for no discernable reason. Beyond that, you’re left with a predictable retread of the original that relies too heavily on vulgarity for its own sake and the planning of a heist that no audience could possibly care that much about. Here’s hoping that Bad Santa 3 in 2029 will get things back on track.

www.badsanta2.com

Author rating: 4/10