TBT time. Bad Santa is one of the most refreshing Christmas movies of all time, except for the way it treats women who wear larger sizes.
There’s so much to love about this movie starring Billy Bob Thornton as the wasted degenerate thief who doesn’t understand the purpose of orange juice if there’s no booze. There’s the classical music. The non-lame screw-it-because-life’s-a-bag-of-coal-and-you’re-drowning-in-basics when you’re supposed to feel truly blessed attitude. There’s even the way the movie makes you feel feelings with the hapless (round) Thumron Murmon. This movie is payback for everyone who has ever made you feel worn down by all the forced holiday joy while you gulped hot toddies as all the bright and shiny families went frolicking around you.
Jesus blank Christ, thank you for this story about a guy who shows up for work like this.
Nearly every part is SO GOOD. Although it is an equal opportunity offender when it comes to marginalized people: little people, people with learning disabilities and the list goes on, but now our sensitive spot. What happens when the least insufferable holiday movie makes its lead horndog go for — not one, but TWO women of size? He “makes merry” with a woman in a fitting room in the “plus-size woman” section. (She’s wearing glittery stripper heels.) Plus, he also goes for a “curvier” prostitute as well.
This is all supposed to be hilarious, that he actually does stuff with “large women,” a group used to being fetishized as inherently sexual because…more meat. It’s not that we’re not leaping with joy that the film acknowledges women who shop in THAT section deserve sexual attention. But instead of these trysts being your standard meaningless sexy time sessions, they’re treated as running gags. We won’t go into too many details, but they’re, well, dirty. Further, the “large women” aspect makes bumbling people in the movie uncomfortable. Did it really have to be about getting physical with 1) a cheap sex worker, and 2) someone nuts enough to have sex in a dressing room who the film doesn’t even show? (We just know she’s the sort of woman who shops in what the film affectionately calls the big and tall section.)
So, it’s still a gift of a movie, but we just wish they didn’t make the objects of bad Santa’s desires so ridiculous. Way to make this much more awkward family viewing though.