Bad Santa

Herald rating: ****

Miracle On 42nd Street, this ain't. Bing Crosby Dreaming Of A White Christmas, nada. Billy Bob Thornton's Santa - aka Willie T. Soke - is depressed, alcoholic and a safe-cracker. He drinks on the job and gets on the job with female customers in the changing-rooms.

His elf, Marcus (Tony Cox) is a dwarf with anger management issues who works alongside him in the grotto during the day and helps him to break into the department stores' safes after hours.

The pair have been working this gig for eight years, but this Christmas, the security chief (Bernie Mac) is on to them. He wants a cut of the financial action or he'll dob them in to the manager (a show-stealing final bow from the late John Ritter).

All is going to the annual plan until Willie fields a couple of distractions: a new girlfriend, Sue (Lauren Graham), a barmaid who has a Santa fetish and likes him to wear his red hat in bed; and a kid, Thurman Merman (Brett Kelly). When the cops sniff around, Willie hides in the kid's house with Thurman and his dimwitted Grandma (Cloris Leachman) and - well, this is a Santa film after all - finds that the kid is breaking down his bad-guy persona.

Even though it's not the festive time of year this off-the-wall romp is worth a spin.

The DVD's best feature is a series of deleted scenes that show how the cast ad-libbed through most of the action, and a quite good making-of with Thornton, Mac, Cox and director Terry Zwigoff.

* DVD, Video rental from today