Drink & Watch: Bad Santa

I think Bad Santa might be my favorite movie ever made. Every holiday season when the weather starts getting chilly and the leaves start falling from the trees outside I like to open a bottle of whisky, watch Billy Bob Thornton drink himself silly, and laugh my fucking ass off while having a few drams myself. Ever since I discovered the Classic Bay Area Kron channel in the non-HD section of my Comcast guide (an area I rarely look at these days since I like everything as highly-defined as possible) I've been on a huge Three's Company kick. My God, does that show hold up over time! John Ritter as Jack Tripper may be even funnier to me now than he was when I watched as a kid. John's final role before he passed away was as the soft-spoken, uncomfortably conservative mall boss in Bad Santa and it's such an opposite turn from the loud, over-the-top, physical comedy he exuded as Tripper. The scenes he shares with the late Bernie Mac are like duels between two masters of hilarity, battling back and forth in a contest to see who can make the other one laugh first with just a facial expression or an odd twitch of the mouth. I watched this flick again last night and rewound John Ritter's final moments back over and over. I always find new things to laugh about each time I watch this movie, which is why I love it so much.

Of course, I got about as drunk as Billy Bob himself before all was said and done. I was texting my thoughts to a friend at the time, who responded with great news: "You heard they signed on for a sequel, right?"

I had not heard that. Bad Santa 2 in 2016? I'll have to prepare both my funny bone and my liver.

-David Driscoll