Verdict: A brilliant Billy Bob Thornton puts the X (almost) in Xmas. Warning: Don't take the kids!

By ELEANOR RINGEL GILLESPIE
Cox News Service

Not since 1972's “Tales From the Crypt,” in which Joan Collins was unpleasantly surprised by a murderous lunatic in a Santa suit, has jolly ol' St. Nick looked as seedy and psychotic as he does in “Bad Santa.”

As Willie Stokes, Billy Bob Thornton wears the suit, and from the minute we see him, soused and disheveled at the end of a bar, it's exceedingly clear that “Bad Santa” is not a kiddie Christmas movie. Rather, it's the anti-“Elf” — a caustic and vilely comic coal-in-your-stocking flick. That is, at least until, near the end, when, oddly, it becomes mired in candy-cane platitudes.

Willie and his partner Marcus (Tony Cox) are a Santa-and-elf team who consider kids a necessary seasonal evil at best. They're con men who annually get hired by some unsuspecting, large department store (that Marcus is an African-American little person makes them virtually impossible to fire). Then, on Christmas Eve, they use their after-hours access to crack the store's safe and do a little cost-free holiday shopping.

This year finds them at an upscale store in Phoenix, whose overly solicitous and insecure manager (the late John Ritter, giving a lovely performance as usual) is too chicken to kick them out. Even after Willie throws an alcohol-fueled tantrum in front of the waiting children and is caught pulling a Paris Hilton with an employee in the Plus-size Women's Department.

Only two things stand between them and their annual holiday haul. One is store detective Bernie Mac. The other is a placid fat kid (Brett Kelly) who, despite Willie's truculent protests and unjolly manner, insists on believing he is the real Santa Claus.

Calling to mind an overinflated Christmas cherub, Kelly plays innocent Stan Laurel to Thornton's bombastic Oliver Hardy. His chubby gravitas makes him the perfect straight man for the star's exuberantly foul antics. When he asks a sniffly “Santa” how he got sick, he's told, “I loved an unclean woman. It was your sister.”

The kid probably deserves an Oscar nomination just for keeping a straight face.

Having made “Crumb” and “Ghost World,” director Terry Zwigoff certainly knows his way around fringe personalities. That he allows the movie to give the ratty, raw and surly Willie a last-act redemption (of sorts) is a little disappointing. But that's the script, not his direction, which wisely keeps things focused on Billy Bob.

Thornton is terrific — a bottom-feeding third cousin to Bill Murray's ironic, I-just-don't-care movie star in “Lost in Translation.” But unlike Murray, he's stuck in an essentially one-joke movie. Still, it's an awfully good joke, thanks to the brilliant controlled chaos of Thornton's performance.

The actor's gaunt beauty and anarchic sense of humor give Willie a bedraggled appeal. Yeah, he's a foul-mouthed drunk who describes his job as “screaming brats peeing on my lap.” Yet Thornton invests Willie with a deadbeat soul, shrewdly hinting at something redeemable underneath the unspeakable behavior.

By the end of “Bad Santa,” you may no longer believe in Santa Claus, but you certainly will believe in Billy Bob.