“Ha! She’s so grumpy!”
The above statement essentially sums up the reaction you’re expected to have throughout Grumpy Cat’s Worst Christmas Ever – the first (and last?) film to feature everyone’s favorite Reddit cat meme. If you’re anything like me, watching a movie that features Grumpy Cat living in a pet store, espousing cynical philosophy about the true nature of Christmas, doesn’t carry with it a whole lot of expectations in terms of quality.
And yet, somehow the Worst Christmas Ever ends up being the worst Christmas film ever. As we watch Grumpy Cat and her human friend, Crystal (Megan Charpentier), thwart a robbery at the mall, saving the life of some pompous dog apparently worth a fortune, it becomes apparent that things go off the rails during the plot’s setup, leaving no meaningful takeaways to be found. But, this won’t stop jokes from appearing on screen every three seconds, since every character in this movie is a cartoonish goofball who can’t go a split second without trying to make me laugh. In case you’re wondering, they all failed.
In scenes straight out of Home Alone, inept robbers will injure themselves and succumb to the traps put in place by Crystal and Grumpy. Unless the shot of a cat shooting a paintball gun makes you laugh with glee, the similarities between Worst Christmas Ever and other derivative family-oriented holiday movies will be palpable. Not only is Grumpy Cat criminally unoriginal, it opts to tell its story with no creative use of visuals or score whatsoever, banking on it’s furry star being enough to keep the kiddies watching.
Ironically, as the drama of the mall robbery progresses, a talking cat ends up getting far less screen time than Crystal. Luckily, there is no shortage of pop-ups that feature Grumpy Cat doing silly things, made all the worse by the fact that these clips are an aside to the actual content of a scene. I can’t understand the reason for this “creative” choice, and quite frankly, I don’t want to expend much brainpower figuring it out. Simply playing this movie in the background while I cleaned my house was a waste of my time.
Despite the magic of a little girl discovering she can talk to some cranky cat, Grumpy Cat’s Worst Christmas Ever in no way captures the spirit of the season and is best left as a forgotten low-budget TV special, destined to bury a franchise before it even gets off the ground.
Ho Ho … No.
thecinematictangent.com 