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Avg. Critic Score: 70 out of 100 Generally favorable reviews Metascore® based on all critic reviews
Information for Parents:
16 Iffy for 16+
Read Common Sense Media review

Critic scores range from 0 to 100, with higher scores indicating more favorable reviews.

  • 90
    Washington Post | Stephen Hunter

    The movie is -- how can I say this? -- funny as hell. It's like an old Mad magazine "Scenes We'd Like to See" put together by someone on crystal meth, with a vicious streak, an existentialist streak and no mercy anywhere in his soul and only the tiniest flinch at the end, which is probably, sigh, the best way to end. Read full review

  • 88
    USA Today | Mike Clark

    This is a filmmaker who instinctively knows that a shot of Santa sitting at a bar as Ricky Nelson sings Jingle Bells will be no-frills funny. Read full review

  • 88
    Chicago Sun-Times | Roger Ebert

    A demented, twisted, unreasonably funny work of comic kamikaze style, starring Billy Bob Thornton as Santa in a performance that's defiantly uncouth. Read full review

  • 80
    The Hollywood Reporter | Michael Rechtshaffen

    Happens to be extremely funny -- at times sidesplittingly so -- thanks to Zwigoff's way with raw irreverence and Thornton's perfectly pitched, ready-for-anything performance. Read full review

  • 80
    Los Angeles Times | Manohla Dargis

    It unapologetically exults in its characters' glorious imperfection. It's good to know that oddballs, outcasts and people who don't look like Barbie and Ken still have a place in American movies and that not everyone in Hollywood pays lip service to the nice and polite. Read full review

  • 80
    The New York Times | A.O. Scott

    Takes all the Christmas season's bad vibes and converts them into an achingly funny and corrupt dark comedy. Read full review

  • 75
    Rolling Stone | Peter Travers

    If you've had it with all that feel-good holiday sludge, hook up with the combustibly nasty Bad Santa. It could become a Christmas perennial for Scrooges of all ages. Read full review

  • 75
    San Francisco Chronicle | C.W. Nevius

    A tasteless, vulgar, savage assault against everything that is good and decent in the Christmas season. I think you are going to like it. Read full review

  • 70
    Variety | Dennis Harvey

    First-rate talent and a uniquely dyspeptic mood separate this effort from more routine, populist stabs at tasteless yukkage. Read full review

  • 25
    Entertainment Weekly | Owen Gleiberman

    Isn't up to much of anything besides pretending that swearwords and snot-nosed insults, served up by Santa with an almost institutional monotony, aren't just naughty. They're -- big joke! -- incorrect. Read full review

View more reviews for Bad Santa on Metacritic

Information for Parents
Common Sense Media says Iffy for 16+ Too naughty for kids; nice for some grown-ups.
What Parents Need to Know Parents need to know that this movie, though it features a Santa Claus character and Christmas theme, is not for kids and may even be too much for some adults. It includes profanity, nonstop drinking and smoking, extremely explicit sexual references and situations, and graphic violence, including a suicide attempt, hitting below the belt, murder, and shooting. Note: This is a review of Badder Santa, an unrated version that was released on DVD and is available through Netflix.
  • Families can talk about dark comedies and raunchy humor. Do you think comedies are getting raunchier? What more recent comedies can you compare this to? Would this movie work with a more innocent brand of humor or not? Which movies are funny without the violent and sexual content?
The good stuff
  • message true0 Positive messages: Several characters are outright criminals who steal, con people, and even commit murder. The main character's specialty is safecracking. During the Christmas holidays, he poses as Santa Claus in order to rob department stores. He also steals a car, takes money from a residence's safe, and is overall a selfish, mean, reckless individual. However, the movie establishes him as an antihero whose actions are played for laughs. He later experiences an epiphany when he befriends a lonely boy and becomes an unorthodox father figure to him.
What to watch for
  • violence false5 Violence: Violence includes murder, characters being shot, attempted suicide. A man is killed when other characters conspire to murder him and then pin him between two vehicles. Police officers and a store robber engage in a gun battle. His partner, who flees the scene, is shot eight times by police, but survives. A lot of fighting, such as punching, kicking, shoving, and kicking in the groin. A man appears to be attempting suicide in his car in a garage, but he doesn't go through with it.
  • sex false5 Sex: Very explicit sexual situations and references, borderline NC-17. A man and a woman -- both shown clothed from the waist up -- have sex in a car. They later have sex in a hot tub. A man and a woman have what is implied as anal sex in a department store's fitting room; their legs are shown under the door. A man hits on a girl during a pinball game; she is later revealed to be underage.
  • language false5 Language: Extreme profanity and strong language throughout.
  • consumerism false0 Consumerism: Not an issue
  • drugsalcoholtobacco false5 Drinking, drugs and smoking: Characters drink and smoke throughout the movie. The main character is a belligerent alcoholic who regularly drinks to excess.
An independent nonprofit dedicated to providing families the information they need to help kids thrive in a world of media and technology. © Common Sense Media Inc. 2010. All rights reserved.

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