The good news is that Bad Santa is not a lump of cinema coal in your holiday stocking.

It's an adult comedy as funny as it is subversive and edgy.

Bad Santa is a movie for everyone who likes Scrooge better at the beginning of A Christmas Carol than after those meddling ghosts alter his miserly psyche.

In other words, it's one hilarious but nasty look at the commercialism of Christmas.

Bad Santa started as a concept by its executive producers Joel and Ethan Coen, who turned their idea over to John Requa and Glenn Ficarra, the screenwriters of the edgy kids' movie Cats & Dogs.

Off the four of them went to Terry Zwigoff, the eccentric director of Crumb and Ghost World.

You'll need a cast iron constitution to stomach the plum pudding they've concocted.

Career criminal Willie T. Soke (Billy Bob Thornton) has found himself the perfect profession.

He just has to work three weeks every year to keep himself in all the booze, cigarettes and sex he needs for the other 49 weeks of the year.

Willie is a mall Santa whose partner in all things criminal is an African American dwarf named Marcus (Tony Cox).

Marcus has three important jobs: He plays Santa's elf and keeps Willie just sober enough to snarl at the kids who come to the malls' North Pole castles.

Most importantly, Marcus cases the mall security systems and vaults becuase this Santa is a master safecracker.

The genius of Bad Santa is that it's unrelentingly and unapologetically naughty.

Every time it even hints at being nice, writers, director and cast top up the nastiness.

Just how naughty you ask?

Willie meets a nubile bartender named Sue (Lauren Tom) who's been wanting to have sex with Santa ever since she reached puberty.

As long as Willie is wearing his Santa cap Sue is ready, willing and very able.

The mall security officer (Bernie Mac) is possibly even more corrupt than Willie and Marcus and certainly more lethal.

Into this mix comes a kid (Brett Kelly) with a life so miserable it makes Tiny Tim's lot look positively blissful.

Thornton plays Willie as if this was Sling Blade's emotional twin. He doesn't even suggest he's in a comedy which makes everything Willie does all the funnier.

The writing is so clever and devious it's near impossible to guess where the film's going. The ending has a howl-aloud twist.

This is not even remotely a movie for children but it will delight the naughty child in adults with a wicked sense of humour.

(This film is rated 14-A)

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