After the remarkable one-two punch of Crumb and Ghost World, Terry Zwigoff eases into the mainstream with this R-rated holiday comedy (2003) about an alcoholic thief (Billy Bob Thornton) working as a department store Santa. He and his partner, a caustic dwarf (Tony Cox), show up in a different city every year and rip off the store safe on Christmas Eve, but their scam is complicated this time when a miserable fat kid (Bret Kelly) attaches himself to the bitter, foulmouthed Thornton. Joel and Ethan Coen wrote the story, using the ancient gag of the toxic Santa as a vehicle for their patented brand of misanthropy; Zwigoff and company wring some laughs out of it, though the tone is uniformly mean and vulgar. With Bernie Mac, Lauren Graham, and John Ritter in his last film.