These holiday movies go on Santa’s naughty list
‘Pushing the envelope’ is putting it mildly for slew of crowd-pleasers
You’ll have a crude Christmas, that’s certain, if you’re looking for holiday movies at the cineplex.
Christmas-themed offerings are overwhelmingly R-rated in 2016, starting with Billy Bob Thornton’s return as a degenerate Kris Kringle poseur in Bad
Santa 2 (in theaters now). T.J. Miller and Kate McKinnon lead an ensemble cast throwing the biggest, bawdiest work bash ever in Office Christmas Party (Dec. 9). Yes, that’s cocaine coming out of the snow machine.
Why Him? (Dec. 23) features Bryan Cranston’s Ned Fleming locked in a bitter quest to stop Internet billionaire Laird Mayhew (James Franco) from proposing to his beloved daughter over the holidays. Fleming even hates the tattoo of his family’s Christmas card that Mayhew inks on his back.
We’ve come a long way from Jimmy Stewart’s wholesome It’s a
Wonderful Life, which is celebrating its 70th anniversary.
“They just keep pushing and pushing the envelope. Now they’re not using a double entendre, they just say the word,” says Jimmy Hawkins, 75, who starred as Tommy, George Bailey’s son, in 1946’s It’s a Wonder
ful Life. “The studios only make pictures people want to see. There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s just not my cup of tea.”
Thornton believes it was 2003’s Bad Santa that sowed the dirty seeds. “It was the first of its kind, that sort of dark/edgy, profane kind of thing.”
His Willie Soke became a cult classic with crude talk, cheap whiskey and cigarettes, using his Santa disguise to rob the mall at night.
Real mall Santas objected, and one woman told Thornton he had “ruined the name of Santa and Jesus and the Bible. I told her, ‘Ma’am, I have read the Bible, and Santa is not in it,’ ” Thornton recalls.
The formula worked. “It’s the juxtaposition with a sentimental holiday. To imagine Santa having a smoke, it’s just funny,” he says.
Thornton’s new Bad Santa 2 goes even further, ensuring the image of Soke having a quickie on a Christmas tree lot with an upstanding charity head (Christina Hendricks) will dance in moviegoers’ heads for generations.
Film critic Alonso Duralde, author of the seasonal guide Have Yourself a Movie Little
Christmas, says Bad Santa opened the floodgates for studios trying to attract a paying niche audience while TV runs 24/7 conventional yuletide fare.
“Going for the R-rated audiences is something you’re not going to get on the Hallmark Channel,” Duralde says. “Christmas movies were a last bastion of traditional sweet areas. So it feels jarring. But it also feels like you’re getting away with something. So they’re pushing that as hard as they can.”
Office Christmas Party directors Josh Gordon and Will Speck say they were inspired by the sappy Christmas movie glut.
“We wanted to make something for adults,” Gordon says. “The holidays are a way to get away from the pain of the year, creating something people can laugh at. That’s a gift.”
Speck insists it’s a gift with feeling, like the movies of old. But different.
Miller’s character is trying to save his co-workers’ jobs by throwing a party to impress a key client.
“There’s a lot of heart and humanity here,” Speck says. “Ultimately, it’s a life-affirming journey that we arrive at through an R rating.”