Le père Noël est une ordure [Santa Claus Is a Stinker] (1982)

(On TV, December 2020) Christmas Eve is an ideal time to revisit French classic comedy Le père Noël est une ordure. After all, the last few weeks have been a relentless assault of holiday cheer, humanist values, peace on Earth and goodwill among all humans – it’s time for something different. The very least you can say about this film is that it’s at the opposite end of the Christmas spirit. Taking place at a suicide hotline on Christmas Eve, it features exceptionally misanthropic characters behaving extremely badly, and this until the very end of the film. It’s probably more offensive and funnier today than it’s ever been, because part of the film’s joy is how bluntly it revels in its hatred for humanity. The humour isn’t sophisticated, but most of it is nasty enough to make even jaded viewers aghast – pure shock comedy. Unlike its markedly inferior American remake Mixed Nuts, it doesn’t even try to blunt the nastiest edges of the narrative. This was my first viewing in decades, but certainly not my first viewing: Le père Noël est une ordure was, somehow, a fixture of French-Canadian television holiday schedules in the mid-to-late 1980s, and seems to still be running strong even today. It’s not going to be for everyone, but it’s refreshingly going for broke in the ways it tries to make viewers laugh, and damn those who may be offended.