by MATTHEW HAYS

It's difficult to imagine an actor other than Billy Bob Thornton taking on the title role of Bad Santa, director Terry (Ghost World) Zwigoff's latest feature. Thornton has always exuded a strange mix of sex appeal and repulsiveness that suits this Santa beautifully. No matter that he doesn't have the trademark overweight Santa figure - the contradictions in Thornton's persona match the sheer conflicts we see in this sleazy old Saint Nick.

This is not a children's film. Here, Santa is drunk to the point of wetting himself publicly, swearing at the children as they line up to sit on his knee at the mall, loudly screwing women in adjacent change rooms, and so on. Not only that, Thornton knocks over various malls, robbing them after hours then moving on to the next city's main shopping centre.

There are certainly laughs to be had here. Thornton is good at comedy, and conjures up enough scumbag charm to almost pull this off. The problem is the gag at the centre of Bad Santa. The joke, of course, is that someone this crass, this sordid, could possibly be wearing a Santa suit, attempting to embody the symbol of this holy and intensely good-natured holiday. Trouble is, that joke gets tired very quickly indeed. Look! Santa's screwing an overweight woman up the bum with his red suit hanging around his ankles! Look! Santa's falldown drunk at the beginning of one of his shifts! Okay, okay, we get it.

Bad Santa veers episodically from nasty scenario to nasty scenario. The main story arcs involve an overweight child whom Santa befriends (Zwigoff clearly has an interest in intergenerational relationships) and one last final ultimate heist (wow, am I sick of those as screenwriting climaxes).

After all that Santa sleaze, we just know Thornton's in for lastminute redemption. (Trust me, I'm not giving anything away.) It's just got to happen, even in a film that purports to show the ultimate downand- dirty Santa. A heart of gold is a sorry and sad inevitability, one that doesn't help this movie one bit.

Bad Santa opens Friday, Nov. 28

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