Seeing Billy Bob Thornton for the first time in Bad Santa, I couldn't help but think that I was looking at a real-life version of the Grinch. Scruffy and disheveled in his Santa suit, chain smoking, drunk and wearing an expression that says "Kill me now," Thornton sits among cheerful bar patrons full of the Christmas spirit. Bad Santa is a surly, graphic and darkly adult comedy. Bad Santa is not for kids. It isn't family-friendly. It isn't filled with holiday cheer. This is hardcore Santa. He spends most of the movie drinking like a fish, cussing like a sailor, smoking like a chimney, being rude to kids and having a lot of sex. And, all of it is funny. Very funny.

Santa is a professional safe-cracker who works a holiday scam with his partner, Marcus, an elf played by Tony Cox. Every year, they work a different department store in a different state and every Christmas Eve they rob the store and get away with enough cash and loot to make it through another year. This year's mark is in Phoenix where Bob, an uptight department store manager, (John Ritter in his last role) and mall security manager, Gin (Bernie Mac) have their suspicions about the unusual duo. Ultimately, they prove to be no match for the clever conmen.

Predictably, it takes a kid to soften Santa's hardened heart. 12-year-old Thurman (Brent Kelly) is so lonely for companionship and so pathetic in his nerdiness that he 'adopts' Santa and takes him in. There are many funny exchanges between Santa and the boy. It's only in the (thankfully) few scenes where they attempt to take a more sentimental turn that the movie falters.

But whether it's naughty or nice, this is still a holiday movie, so by the time the credits role, Santa has managed to learn a little lesson about love from the boy and a bartender with a fetish for men in Santa costumes (Lauren Graham).

Thornton makes a great disgruntled Santa. The relationship angle was weak, not necessarily because of Graham but it seemed kind of thrown together. I wished I could have seen more of Bernie Mac. He has one scene with Tony Cox that is hilarious and I wished I could have seen more of that dynamic, but hey, this wasn't their movie.

The ending was a bit of a let-down. It had a traditional 'happy ever after' feeling to it. I would have liked the ending to be a little messier with a few things left up in the air or a little darker even. But despite the kind of ‘kinder and gentler’ final scene, Bad Santa still manages to have a little bite to it. I just wish it had bitten just a bit harder.