Is there anything that has generated as many awful movies as Christmas?
Even without Hallmark, Lifetime and Tim Allen, there are so many movies that are completely unwatchable if you have a three-digit IQ.
Thank God for Billy Bob Thornton, even if he only hit on two of three.
He scored big in two great 2003 Christmas movies, even if he didn’t really add to the Christmas part of the story in one of them.
“Bad Santa” might just be the most bizarre and also funniest Christmas movie ever. Thornton plays a department store Santa who with his accomplice, a black dwarf, robs stores after they close on Christmas eve. His exchange with a kid who still believes is beyond hilarious.
Kid: Your beard’s not real.
Willie: No Shit! It was real, but I got sick and all the hair fell out.
Kid: How come?
Willie: I loved a woman who wasn’t clean.
Kid: Mrs. Santa?
Willie: No it was her sister.
It’s a movie that even has great throwaway gags. We learn that Thornton’s Willie loves to have sex with obese women, and as we pass through the department store we see that the department catering to big women is called “Three Times a Lady.”
There was a sequel — “Bad Santa 2” — 13 years later, but it didn’t have the same magic. Too heavy handed.
Thornton’s other great Christmas movie in 2003 was the wonderful “Love Actually,” in which he had a brief but meaningful role as a George W. Bush-type president of the United States.
He was actually just a supporting player in one of the seven intertwining stories of love in London at Christmas. “Love Actually” is right at the top of my list of favorites.
One category I hate are the movies that are called Christmas movies only because they happen at Christmas — “Die Hard,” “Die Hard 2,” “The Long Kiss Goodnight.”
The thrust of the story in these movies has little or nothing to do with Christmas. You could set all of those stories at some other time of year without having to change a thing.
Then there are the ones that are definitely Christmas stories but they are at best slob stories. Ask a dozen people to name a Chevy Chase role and 11 of them will say Clark Griswold, the well-meaning moron who always manages to screw things up. Randy Quaid has played some fine roles, but he’ll be remembered by almost everyone as the hillbilly Cousin Eddie.
One movie that seems almost to transcend its goofiness is Will Ferrell’s “Elf,” from 2003.
So 2003 was a pretty good year for Christmas movies. Ferrell’s likability is the main reason it succeeds, but think about a supporting cast of Bob Newhart, James Caan, Mary Steenburgen and Ed Answer.
Not bad.
Maybe the two greatest of the old Christmas movies came out just a year apart in the late 1940s — “It’s a Wonderful Life” in 1946 and “Miracle on 34th Street” in 1947. Both are wonderful, even if you’re seen then a dozen times or more. The first as the star power of Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed, while the second is lovely in its simplicity and has an 8-year-old Natalie Wood.
So I set out to write about awful Christmas movies and I wrote mostly about ones I really liked.
I remember one Christmas Eve in the early 1990s when I couldn’t get to sleep. One of the indy stations in Los Angeles was doing continuous showings of “Miracle” all night. I think I finally dozed off on the third time through.
I can’t think of another Christmas movie I could watch again and again and again …