Bad Santa

Started by ShanghaiOrange, April 20, 2003, 10:07:02 PM

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MacGuffin

#45
December 02, 2003, 08:28:31 PM
Talk about the power of good word of mouth:

Bad Santa is Being Naughty at the Box Office
Source: Dimension Films

Dimension Films' Bad Santa took over the North American box office on Monday after grossing $16.8 million in its first weekend of release. Dimension plans to expand the film a few hundred theaters each week through Christmas. The film's opening weekend and strong exit surveys indicate that Bad Santa will continue to remain strong among a wide-range of moviegoers.

This holiday season the traditional Christmas tale will never be the same with the cleverly twisted, merrily irreverent story of a Santa so bad he's wickedly funny. Terry Zwigoff's Bad Santa stars Billy Bob Thornton as one of the most crooked, corrupted and downright hysterical Kris Kringles ever to grace the screen. Inspired by a mix of movie classics including the outrageous one-liners and outcasts of The Bad News Bears and the riotous impertinence of South Park, with a dash of the holiday spirit of It's a Wonderful Life, albeit one that would make Capra wince, Bad Santa is a Christmas comedy unlike any other.

Bad Santa also stars Bernie Mac, John Ritter, Lauren Graham, Tony Cox, Brett Kelly, Cloris Leachman and Lauren Tom.
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks

tpfkabi

#46
December 04, 2003, 10:58:55 PM
Quote from: themodernage02what i cant understand is, how did disney read the script, agree to fund the movie, watch dailies, see the finished cut, pay all this money for the marketing, and decide 2 weeks before its release they were concerned about all this stuff?  its not like it snuck up on them.  why dont they just not make movies they have a problem with, and let another studio have them.  i didnt realize bad santa was disney, but it cant be worse than The Santa Clause 2.

http://www.suntimes.com/output/answ-man/sho-sunday-ebert30.html

p.s. - there's also an interesting question about Kubrick
I am Torgo. I take care of the place while the Master is away.

Sleepless

#47
December 05, 2003, 05:43:17 PM
Been looking forward to this movie since I first heard about it at the beginning of this year - any idea when it's released in the UK? I thought maybe the tone would be something like Death To Smoochy... is it? I hope it'll be even darker, and sounds like it'll be kinda depressing too. Sounds like a kick-ass Christmas movie.

Oh, and yeah the trailer looked shit, but then studios really have no idea how to properly market non-mainstream films really, do they? I mean look at the ad campaignes for stuff like The Good Girl or Solaris. i don't mean the amount of money spent on them - just that the ads completely mislead the audience - so that a mainstream audience will be disappointed by the film becuase they expected something simpler, and less mainstream audiences (like you or me) might be put off becuase the trailer makes the whole thing look like standard studio shit. This is one of the reasons I get so annoyed when people ask what kind of film it is... good films don't come neatly packaged in a genre!!! Anyway, I'll take my rant elsewhere. I just think filmmakers have yet to realise how indie-ish films can still make a lot of money - the superb films are out there, but the business of film still serves Hollywood exclusively. Something has to change.

Does that make sense to you guys?
He held on. The dolphin and all the rest of its pod turned and swam out to sea, and still he held on. This is it, he thought. Then he remembered that they were air-breathers too. It was going to be all right.

Ravi

#48
December 05, 2003, 10:57:23 PM
This movie was hilarious!  It would have been so easy to screw this film up and make the audience quickly tire of the drinking and cursing Santa, but it was extremely funny.  The jokes were more than his saying "fuck" in front of the children.  I was afraid that the scenes with the kid would lead to something extremely sentimental and changing Billy Bob's heart, but it didn't end with him learning the true meaning of Christmas or anything like that.

My only complaint is Lauren Graham's character.  She pops up throughout the film, but isn't that important for the plot, though the car scene is pretty funny.  She was shown to have a weird Santa fetish, why not show a little more weirdness to her character?

The theater was packed when I came in, and everyone was enjoying the film immensely.  Two couples walked out.

Finn

#49
December 06, 2003, 09:31:09 AM
I expected a lot of people to walk out on this because the movie was so crowded that it was sold-out material when I saw it. But nobody did it. I think half of the audience was laughing while the other half was just sitting there in depression.

But, didn't anyone feel in the first couple of minutes that the movie might not work? It starts off on such a down-beat note that it looked it would be too depressing to be funny and would instead be some kind of tragic character study. But they really did pull it off and it was hilarious.
Typical US Mother: "Remember what the MPAA says; Horrific, Deplorable violence is okay, as long as people don't say any naughty words."

modage

#50
December 07, 2003, 09:48:52 PM
Quote from: GhostboyNo way will this film be bad.

i wish that were true.  i dont know what sort of crack everyone else was smoking before they saw this movie, but it must've been pretty good cause this movie was pretty terrible.  how in the world could a Zwigoff film produced by the Coen Bros. be terrible?  i dont know, but this is.  

the movie is a one joke premise that isnt particularly that funny to begin with.  oh, hahah i get it.  he's drunk all the time and every other word out of his mouth is "fuck", EVEN in front of kids!  i am just lapping this up.....for an hour and a half.  becauset thats it.  it doesnt expand on that idea, or do anything other than that which is completely predictable.  which, would be fine, if it were atleast funnier.  but it aint.  there are 'curse words' every other sentence and after about 10 minutes, its not funny anymore.  and you become numb to them.  and then it just starts to get sad at how terrible it is.  the opening narration and credits sequence was promising and i could feel myself beginning to enjoy it, but its all downhill from there.  

there isnt hardly a touch of Zwigoffs style or humor throughout this lowbrow piece of shit.  i felt that Billy Bob's was not very funny in the lead and for this movie to work, they needed someone like Bill Murray who has natural comic timing who would add the right touches to make more of the jokes hit right.  there is no subtlety in this whole film of any kind.  it panders to the lowest common denominator.  and it isnt even clever about it.  "ahhhh anal sex with fat chicks!" i'm dying with laughter already.  

shows like south park or family guy, are able to use crude humor involving such topics and do it successfully because the writing is smart.  its clever and its funny.  there is none of that here.  any episode of Family Guy is 100 times more clever and funnie than any 30 minutes out of this piece of shit.  there were a few times where i laughed but really there is no 'smart humor' there. no subversive elements, nothing other than the lowest of lowbrow mainstream movies parading as something edgy or indie because of the talent behind it (weinsteins, coens, zwigoff).  its not.  i just watched 8 crazxy nights the other night, which was TERRIBLE.  but i think Bad Santa was worse. even the supporting players like Bernie Mac and John Ritter who seemed to be trying their best were just missing the mark.  the little kid was probably the funniest thing about it and he aint THAT funny.

how Zwigoff could miss the mark this badly is beyond me.  what a disappointment.  there's more, i just forgot the rest of my rant from a few hours ago.
Christopher Nolan's directive was clear to everyone in the cast and crew: Use CGI only as a last resort.

Ghostboy

#51
December 08, 2003, 02:02:44 AM
My best friend's wife felt exactly the same way as you, right down to the Bill Murray comment. Ebert gave it 3 1/2 stars, Entertainment Weekly gave it a D. Guess it just rubs some people the right way. I'm glad I'm one of 'em.

cine

#52
December 08, 2003, 02:11:01 AM
I enjoyed Thornton's delivery of the character as I think the film would've been too "Quick Change" with Murray. I found Thornton to be very funny.

Cecil

#53
December 08, 2003, 12:54:35 PM
this was like bad lieutenant but with santa. which is a good thing

when i saw the movie, there was a family with 2 kids, and they were laughing at all the cursing and i head a "why is he always drunk?" question from a little girl. heheheh

godardian

#54
December 08, 2003, 01:33:23 PM
I think and hope that my experience with this film will replicate Cecil's.
""Money doesn't come into it. It never has. I do what I do because it's all that I am." - Morrissey

"Lacan stressed more and more in his work the power and organizing principle of the symbolic, understood as the networks, social, cultural, and linguistic, into which a child is born. These precede the birth of a child, which is why Lacan can say that language is there from before the actual moment of birth. It is there in the social structures which are at play in the family and, of course, in the ideals, goals, and histories of the parents. This world of language can hardly be grasped by the newborn and yet it will act on the whole of the child's existence."

Stay informed on protecting your freedom of speech and civil rights.

Gold Trumpet

#55
December 14, 2003, 05:35:24 PM
Its good for the cheap drunk jokes and how far some of those jokes go, but nothing really that great for a comedy. As usual, rigged love interest and sentimentality keep it commonplace and make all the raunchy jokes just look like cheap ploys for laughter. It should have went for satire from start to finish or something better than this.

metroshane

#56
December 14, 2003, 08:46:34 PM
Wow, I can't bare to read all of the comments b/c I just popped in to say I think this was the worst movie I may have ever seen.  I usually like gratuitous cursing but this was just not funny.  Poor poor John Ritter for this is to be his legacy.  Poor Bernie Mac.  He's way to talented to be brought down to this level.  Where's the guy that made Slingblade?  Tony Cox?  Haha funny cursing midget....ok, I get it.  Another role please.  It's like they set up Thorton to be a likable opportunist...but he's really just a jerk.  

Spoiler
QuoteHow did BBT get the shiner?  Where did it go in the next scene?  I bet that was a good scene we never got to see.  Who was in his motel room?  What did they find? How did the kid get his hand to stop bleeding?  Did BBT use the wooden pickle on Sue?  That would have been a scene.  Ok, so if grandma isn't dead, what's the point of acting like  she is and  then popping her up?

Oh yeah, let's introduce a new character in the second half and we'll make her asian so we can get a joke in.  

Ug, I can't think about it anymore...
We live in an age that reads too much to be intelligent and thinks too much to be beautiful.

RegularKarate

#57
December 14, 2003, 10:00:27 PM
I'm really disapointed that people were expecting any more out of this movie... really.

It was funny.. if you didn't find it funny, then you're not into that kind of humor (the humor was well done, you're just not into it) fine, move on.  What else were you expecting from this?

metroshane

#58
December 14, 2003, 10:15:16 PM
Actually I beg your pardon.  Just because I don't think it was successful doesn't mean I don't get it or I don't understand that humor.  I know what they were going for, I can appreciate it, but feel they failed at their attempt.  It's low brow humor and even at that it's done pretty pathetically.  What I expected is smart satire, what I got was what should have been a first draft of a script.  Completely unpolished and unrefined.  Low brow humor is fine, vaudeville knew how to do it.  These folks did not.  It's like the difference between burlesque and strippers.  There is a very fine line between art and pornography.  And a very fine line between wit and sarcasm...and appearantly a very fine line between humor and drivel.  I can tell you a story about bugs but it doesn't make me Kafka.
We live in an age that reads too much to be intelligent and thinks too much to be beautiful.

Sleuth

#59
December 14, 2003, 10:20:42 PM
Quote from: metroshaneActually I beg your pardon.  Just because I don't think it was successful doesn't mean I don't get it or I don't understand that humor.  I know what they were going for, I can appreciate it, but feel they failed at their attempt.  It's low brow humor and even at that it's done pretty pathetically.  What I expected is smart satire, what I got was what should have been a first draft of a script.  Completely unpolished and unrefined.  Low brow humor is fine, vaudeville knew how to do it.  These folks did not.  It's like the difference between burlesque and strippers.  There is a very fine line between art and pornography.  And a very fine line between wit and sarcasm...and appearantly a very fine line between humor and drivel.  I can tell you a story about bugs but it doesn't make me Kafka.

Where does the talent of Bernie Mac fit in
I like to hug dogs
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