How cynical is too cynical? It seems only inevitable that a film like Bad Santa would be made, openly mocking everything that’s patently artificial about the most upbeat of holidays, but when this sort of contempt is the only note you can play, the final product proves all too finite in its capacity to entertain.

Have we really become so sardonic as a society that Santa can find itself a sizeable paying audience? So it would appear, and for a critic in his early thirties to decry the film’s appeal would come across as more than a little stodgy, for it’s not as though we haven’t seen this sort of moral squalor on the big screen before. Santa’s dubious accomplishment is in collecting every possible expression of objectionable behavior under one roof and passing it off as comedy – all the while failing to give us a reason to care. (At least the South Park movie had a point to make about parents neglecting to monitor their kids’ mass-media intake.)

The best comedies are either utterly removed from any basis in reality (see Airplane!) or completely steeped in it (see Lost in Translation), the latter category deriving its power from putting up a mirror and showing us our very laughable foibles. Santa’s all too effective in presenting the mediocrity that pervades suburban America around the holidays, but insistently labels it all as Not-Me, a dispiriting misanthropy that smugly distances us from the proceedings and prevents any opportunity for sympathy.

In Santa’s world just about everyone’s a grotesque, and as in director Terry Zwigoff’s previous feature, Ghost World, it’s the protagonists who loathe everyone around them but are themselves in need of the most repair. Billy Bob Thornton’s Willie T. Stokes plays Santa at department stores one month out of each year, with his own dwarf assistant Marcus (Tony Cox) in tow to do the elf chores, but it’s all a front for an annual store-cleaning larceny operation that allows them to live large the rest of the year – or, in Stokes’ case, to booze it up daily in Miami until the next Christmas comes around.

This year’s target is a sizeable emporium at Saguaro Square in Arizona, whose manager (John Ritter) hires them despite Stokes’ obvious un-Santa-like disposition. Drinking between each kids’ entreaties for schwag at the “Christmas Corral,” his mustache and beard either upside-down or barely affixed, and so apathetic he pisses himself right in his chair, he can’t even be bothered to clean himself up when an ice-cream-laden child sneezes chocolate all over his face. Stokes and his parade of preadolescents combine for an unwatchable assembly of crimes against taste, and Zwigoff’s obvious message is “can you believe we’ve got the chutzpah to show you all this?”

That grownups might behave so abominably around children is probably no surprise in this day and age; less believable is that a cute young bartender (Lauren Graham of TV’s “Gilmore Girls”) would be so instantly attracted to Stokes with no effort on his part. A quick cut to them doing the nasty in the parking lot renders all too clear that she’s got a Santa fetish, which is sufficient motivation for her presence for the duration of the film, but hardly qualifies as a convincing pairing in real life. Stokes is simply too devoid of charm or anything resembling social skills – which is probably an estimable achievement for Thornton as an actor.

Of course, in a movie like this his nemeses would be equally repugnant, but Bernie Mac’s Gin Slagel, the mall’s security chief, repels in largely physical ways, from his chain-smoking and overflowing ashtrays to his just-off-the-mark Western wardrobe to his rotten teeth to his stool-softener beverages. And then it turns out his soul’s at least as questionable, for when he hears of Stokes’ pending schemes to clean out the store, he insists on a cut of the action.

Cursing up a storm in front of all his child co-stars, hitting on minors at the mall arcade, drinking (in one scene) nine beers in thirty seconds, and borrowing the changing rooms for loud afternoon trysts, Stokes’ barrage of obliquities finally gives way to something resembling character development when he meets his polar opposite in Thurman (Brett Kelly), a chubby third grader who’s convinced this loathsome bum’s the real Santa Claus, and who remains oblivious to all his verbal abuse when Stokes, suddenly in need of somewhere to stay, moves into his house.

Thurman’s essentially abandoned by his parents, looking after himself in a sizeable suburban dwelling with every possible amenity (and plenty of cash in the safe, which Stokes quickly purloins), otherwise inhabited only by his consummately senile grandmother (Cloris Leachman, painfully slumming long after her Oscar®-winning years) who doesn’t even notice when Thurman slices his hand wide open one morning and runs around bleeding abundantly and screaming in pain. Stokes takes full advantage of this situation, installing himself as head of household, but he never counted on Thurman’s outright lack of guile and fawning fascination that the one and only St. Nick has shacked up in his home.

The kid’s persistent optimism hardly influences Stokes’ ingravescent behavior, as he comes to the Christmas Corral more violently trashed every day, and it’s clear that a film can only be so resolutely antisocial for so long. Santa’s ultimate effect is more wearying than comedic, and we can only hope for some sort of plausible narrative trajectory to provide a point to all the wallowing. A gist is eventually forthcoming, but it may be too little too late, since we’ve spent the vast majority of the film simply being stunned by all that transpires; the final mythoclastic image of Kris Kringle being shot down by police mercifully euthanizes this tale that does blessedly avoid simplistic moralizing but impresses more than it truly amuses. Santa probably isn’t the most noxious movie to ever find wide release, but it is an effective litmus test for your own tastes – if impossibly dreary content (absent any edifying lessons) can't cancel out any technical excellence, then yours may be a case of innocence lost.

For a more inspiring alternative might I suggest this season’s grandest entry, and one virtually devoid of disappointments? The final segment of The Lord of the Rings trilogy is at last upon us, and with it the end of an era. Whereas so many other multi-part film series this year have failed to live up to their promise, we can finally breathe easy that director Peter Jackson and all his colleagues have truly captured lightning in a bottle. Feast your eyes upon The Return of the King, relish its wonders and mourn its end, for you can be sure the twenty-first century is not likely to see anything quite like it for some time.

That sort of hyperbole is how writers try to get their quotes onto the movie posters, I know, but it appears that 2003 has saved the best for last, with a 200-minute finale that not only boggles the mind on its own, but wholly justifies the two films that came before and makes a strong case that the combined trilogy is nothing less than the Gone With The Wind of our age.

Here’s the key to the series’ greatness, put into high relief in this third installment and an effective contrast to so many other franchises that were found wanting: it’s all about the characters and their internal struggles more than any spectacles the effects crew supply. Even with all the warfare, the physical stresses, and the magical sights our heroes must encounter, what truly grips us is the psychological and emotional trials we clearly see on their faces. Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen, delectable beyond reason) has armies of orcs (and worse) to contend with, yes, but ache as he aches with the uncertainty that his elven lady love Arwen (Liv Tyler, resplendent as usual) will have remained behind in Middle Earth for him. Frodo (Elijah Wood) and Sam (Sean Astin) are nowhere near their goal, but it’s the dynamics of their friendship that concern us most. There’s no shortage of heart-rending moments in King, scenes of both human frailty and sublimity, and without such a tale all the sturm, drang, and digital accoutrements would amount to nothing.

Notice how content is king from the beginning, as Jackson opens with Gollum’s backstory, showing us how his addiction to his newly-found ring steadily withered his body and soul until the hobbit Smeagol became the hideous wretch that both plagues and guides Frodo and Sam through the dark topology of Mordor. Just as in the preceding Two Towers, he struggles with his own lust to reclaim his “precious,” and gradually poisons his companions’ trust for each other. Writing all this in the late forties, J.R.R. Tolkien had a firm understanding of the mutability of the psyche, and of how each person struggles with the good and the bad, selfish and selfless, as illustrated in scene after scene: the rulers of Rohan contemplate whether they should help Gondor, who failed to aid them in their battle royale at the end of Towers, Gondor’s acting king gives in to his personal grief over his dead son to the neglect of his subjects, and the hobbit Pippin finds himself tempted by the forces within Saruman’s black globe. Everyone has a decision to make – with the fate of the world in the balance.

All of King’s dramatis personae certainly have their hands full, and with every half hour the ante ups to almost unendurable stakes: Mordor’s recruited/created seemingly limitless armies to assault Gondor, and the forces Aragorn marshalls in Middle Earth’s defense seem hardly adequate; the steward of Gondor’s throne sends too many soldiers to their deaths in a pointless attempt to reclaim a nearby encampment overrun with savages, and the sorts of monstrosities Frodo and Sam must avoid in Mordor’s recesses are hopelessly vile. All this dramatic buildup is endlessly hypnotic, and that Jackson can present the various narrative strands in an orderly fashion is Oscar®-worthy at the least, and masterpiece caliber at best.

And oh yes, the visual effects: from cities hewn out of the sides of mountains, to geographical vistas so vast the eyes can scarcely take them in, to hordes of orcs stretching past the horizon, to emerald armies of the dead sweeping over their foes like ocean waves, the sights are so seamlessly woven into the scenery that one is inclined to believe that at last, all things are possible in the cinema. I remember praising The Fellowship of the Ring as embodying the very magic of the movies with its optical marvels, but it’s not simply individual digital creations that occupy our eyes and show no trace of artifice – Jackson’s effects crew have concocted an entire world in which suspension of disbelief is all too easy. The human and the otherworldly blend organically, and all in the service of a story that would be compelling even if the accompanying CGI were only half as convincing.

Ian McKellen as Gandalf, less of a presence in Towers, serves once again as the tale’s moral center, and his magic is more inspiration than prestidigitation; the courage he radiates and instills in those around him can be said to be his greatest enchantment, and far more valuable than any god-in-a-box hocus-pocus a lesser writer might’ve had him perform at crucial moments. Though a wizard, Gandalf comes across as representative of all that is good about humanity, and thanks to his decisiveness, the theme of King is made manifest: sometimes in the most baleful circumstances it is enough to not back down, to simply try. How awesome when Aragorn rallies his troops yet again, as one insurmountable conflict segues into another, confessing that yes, death is on the horizon for them all, “…but it is not this day.”

“The board is set, and the pieces are moving” for “the greatest battle of all time,” and the deaths are glorious, the shots majestic, the losses not insignificant (and let us not forget all the horses in the tale who served bravely as well, and suffered for it), but throughout it all King is about the fluctuations of the human (or hobbit) spirit – note how often the hobbits are told war “is no place” for them, and yet Pippin and Merry are the first to charge behind Aragorn in the last, most hopeless battle at the gates of Mordor. The scale is mind-bending, but the stakes are all too human: when faced alone against the Witch King of Agmar, and you are only a girl who snuck into battle disguised under armor, what if your standing up to him could make a difference?

And when Sam and Frodo finally reach the volcanic forge of Mordor, and Frodo exhibits a critical failure of courage that could doom all of the western world, the sense of peril and hopelessness is crushing; Sam himself was tempted by the ring earlier, and Gollum’s determination to kill them both and recover his prized ring is greater than their resolve to destroy it, and you can hardly blame them for contemplating giving up after their ordeal spanning three years of movies. Elijah Wood’s face, perhaps the most cinematically-suited of his generation, captures all of King’s hopes and fears, and the loss he experiences here under Sauron’s nose (okay, eye) becomes ours. King is not a film we simply watch, or follow, or enjoy – it is all inescapably felt, not least the bonds of friendship between Sam and Frodo that prove the most touching of all. In the end, humans have much to learn from hobbits.

Their adventure apparently lasted thirteen months in Middle Earth time, but for us it feels like eons, especially when Frodo and Gandalf are finally reunited, and you feel the smaller one has grown well past the dependence on the wizard he displayed in the first film; similarly, when the hobbits return to the Shire, they’ve all seen so much of the larger world that returning home cannot but feel like a letdown. For fans of Orlando Bloom’s Legolas or John Rhys-Davies’ Gimli, it must be noted that they ultimately receive the least character development of anyone – but the evolution we see in the hobbits gives final witness to the trilogy’s formidable scope and narrative heft.

There is a substantial epilogue after all the hullabaloo that threatens to slow things down to a jarring snail’s pace, but the point will be made clear in time; and besides, it’s not as though we’re ready to let go so soon. Taken as a whole, the Ring’s cycle is quite possibly a cinematic feat that does nothing less than fully realize all the potential of the medium, an artistic landmark without peer, a benchmark before which films for the decades following will fall short. Go see it while you can, for henceforth at the multiplexes you’ll be hearing more than often than not after a given film, “well, that was no Lord of the Rings."