The baddest Santa on the planet returns for another holiday heist, in “Bad Santa 2”. Fueled by cheap whiskey, greed and hatred, Willie (Billy Bob Thornton) teams up once again with his angry little sidekick, Marcus (Tony Cox), to knock off a Chicago charity for the picking on Christmas Eve. Along for the ride is ‘the kid’ chubby and cheery Thurman Merman (Brett Kelly), a 250-pound ray of sunshine who brings out Willie’s sliver of humanity. Mommy issues arise when the pair are joined by Willie’s horror story of a mother, Sunny Soke (Kathy Bates). As a super butch super bitch, Sunny raises the bar for the gang’s ambitions, while somehow lowering the standards of criminal behavior. Willie is further burdened by lusting after the curvaceous and prim Diane (Christina Hendricks), the charity director with a heart of gold and libido of steel, who throws a kink in Willie’s plans. “Bad Santa 2” is directed by Mark Waters, and is rated R for crude sexual content and language throughout, and some graphic nudity.

I have this theory that we all have an alcoholic family member who has a little one too many around the holiday season, and spouts off more than they rightfully should in front of their loved ones. This is a welcoming metaphor for the sequel thirteen years in the making; “Bad Santa 2”. I say this because said family member could be a riot the first time you hear him sling a curse word or two, simply because you didn’t expect such a thing. As time goes on, it gets old because you soon realize that person has a deeper problem. Are you getting where I’m going with this? This movie is a train-wreck that only further cements the ideal that comedy sequels don’t work in 2016. Why don’t they work? A majority of them settle for relying on material from the original, better predecessor, and it usually can only create damage to any creativity that the newest effort can muster up. This movie should’ve never even been a thought process. The original “Bad Santa” might not be the movie everyone conjures up when they think of Christmas, but I enjoyed it for an original take on holiday movies that can sometimes feel a little unrealistic. So what makes a sequel marketed in the same light and tone of the original so much different? I made a list and plan on checking it twice.

First of all there’s the characters. The sequel re-unites Thornton, Cox, Kelly and Octavia Spencer. The latter of which have a two minute cameo involving the same stick she spun in the original film. It’s funny to see the most notable actor/actress in this movie as nothing more than a two-bit prostitute who calls her female genatalia a ham sandwich. It goes to show you where her career was at in 2003. Anyway, The other trio are reduced to nothing more than outlines of who they were in the first movie. According to screenwriter Johnny Rosenthal, these characters haven’t changed so much as a pair of socks since the original movie. He proves this by a repetition in jokes and material that was much better set up thirteen years ago. Thornton is still a drunk, cursing womanizer, whose emotional growth at the end of the first movie is ruined in favor of redundant class. Cox is a little person, so of course we have to poke fun at his height every five minutes. Cox witty backlashes against these satires are perhaps the only joy I got out of the movie, and created some legit hearty laughs between the nasty appeal of raunchy comedy. Kelly has absolutely no reason to be in this movie. Between his love for sandwiches which was nothing more than a footnote in the first movie, Kelly is still every bit a weird, albeit slow functioning human being. The difference here is as a twenty-one year old, it doesn’t have the same kind of charms it does as a child. What worked about the union of Thornton and Kelly in that movie was Kelly serving as the anti-child of sorts to Thornton’s daily abuse of dealing with every snotty-nosed child that invaded his space. It crafted a heartwarming side to our protagonist, but here the movie even struggles to find a reason to keep them together for a scene or two.

Then there’s the newbies. Bernie Mac and John Ritter are unfortunately no longer with us, and I didn’t understand until I saw the movie just how big of a loss they were as supporting characters. This film’s best attempt at bridging the gap is introducing Kathy Bates as Willie’s crude Mother, as well as Christina Hendricks as his newest love interest. Did I say love interest? I meant screw-in-an-alley-interest. The romantic relationship between them not only feels unbelievable in concept, but also in execution as Thornton and Hendricks have absolutely no chemistry between them. Her character feels too good for him, and a subplot involving Hendricks cheating spouse goes absolutely nowhere. I’m serious, his sexual act gets recorded by a character and then never mentioned again. As for Bates, she’s a solid addition, but her material is nothing fresh or witty for this level. She’s very much just a female version of Willie, and the two of them together makes for the most unhealthy of relationships that involve him slugging her across the face upon reunion. Nothing like female abuse to get the holidays rolling, eh?

I mentioned before that the laughs rely too much on the original movie, but this one lacks one strong detail in difference that halts the success of those laughs; an emotional register. What was great about “Bad Santa” was that there was a dysfunctional twist in family importance during the holidays that the movie stressed. There is a legitimate transformation emotionally in Willie, and it was a positive to see him grow by the finale of the film. We regress here because not only has Willie stepped on those same achievements that he flourished in that movie, but gotten worse as the crude factor is turned up to twelve. The jokes here seem to have very little setup, so the punchline is visible from miles away. The worst kind of comedic material is that of which you can see coming from a mile away, and I found myself correctly predicting most of the paths that each flimsy scene took us down. Without the heart and compassion of the first movie to direct our characters to what is right and wrong, “Bad Santa 2” lacks a valuable moral compass that never limits the overexposure of redundancy in script deposition. This movie is a very light 82 minute sit, and it only serves as a reminder the bare minimum in laughs and story that this movie settled for to make some money on a still valuable property.

It’s shot competently enough, but the first movie did a much better job at capitalizing on the very backdrops and imagery of the Christmas season that bit into the psyche of Willie and his contempt for routine. The benefit of a film location of Chicago as opposed to Arizona from the original movie is that it at least feels like Christmas, and that’s one of the only positives that I can give this movie. Some of the editing is a little lingering, pushing the boundaries of the stale humor resonating in every give. Sadly the original director didn’t return for “Bad Santa 2”, and something as meaningful as that really plays its hand in the situational humor and character arcs that I’ve already mentioned. Without it, you’re taking the characters you know and love, and are putting them in something that might as well be “A Madea Christmas”, ya know, with two or three good laughs.

Overall, “Bad Santa 2” is a lump of coal for a once prosperous and original Christmas traditional movie. It relies too much on the past gags and sight humors, neglecting the ability to ever stand out on its own feet. It’s definitely not the worst comedy sequel I’ve seen, but even the most die-hard of fans will find very little to appreciate about a script that dumbs down redundancy to classless levels. After unwrapping this gift, you realize there’s a better movie still out there that you didn’t get.

4/10