This is an archival story that predates current editorial management.
This archival content was written, edited, and published prior to LAist's acquisition by its current owner, Southern California Public Radio ("SCPR"). Content, such as language choice and subject matter, in archival articles therefore may not align with SCPR's current editorial standards. To learn more about those standards and why we make this distinction, please click here.
As excellent as the choice was to have Aubrey Plaza voice Grumpy Cat for her own Lifetime Christmas movie, the movie looks a little... less than excellent.
Lifetime dropped the trailer on YouTube today, and Grumpy Cat's Worst Christmas Ever seems almost live up to its own title. As reported previously by The Hollywood Reporter, the film is about a "pet-store cat that is perpetually overlooked and the 12-year-old girl who can communicate with her." In true Internet form, Worst Christmas Ever features at least three 'meta' moments that tells its audience that, "Hey we know this isn't actually all that great so let's laugh along with it, shall we?" Either that or it's a work of postmodern cinematic genius.
0:33: "Don't get sappy on me! Waaaait I forgot, it's a Lifetime movie."
It's funny because Grumpy Cat is self-aware that she's in a Lifetime Movie! Jean-Luc Godard would be proud.
0:46: "Get outta here British Grumpy Cat!"
An imagined version of Grumpy Cat with a cartoonish British accent scolds the movie for creating the fiction of a paintball gun that can be used by cats to fend of baddies. I wonder if British Grumpy Cat has more appearances throughout the movie.
0:52: "Go ahead, ignore the title of my own movie."
Is anybody else even aware that they're in a movie, Grumpy Cat? Is this the Cabin In The Woods of Lifetime Original Movies™?
With grumpy cat unable to have any other facial expression, will Grumpy Cat's Worst Christmas Ever basically be a television Christmas movie version of the Kuleshov effect? Does the film deal with the issues of male gaze, with so much of the camera fixated on its two female characters? Does it have a Marxist take on the consumerism of the Judeo-Christian holiday season? Who knows?!
Grumpy Cat's Worst Christmas Ever is directed by Tim Hill, who is responsible for such masterpieces as the Alvin And The Chipmunks movie and Hop, an animated movie about the Easter Bunny that nobody liked. To be fair, he also made the SpongeBob SquarePants Movie, and that was both awesome and very meta.
Grumpy Cat's Worst Christmas Ever is set to air on Saturday, November 29 on the Lifetime Channel.
