Wednesday, December 24, 2014

Ho, Ho, No!

Grumpy Cat's Worst Christmas Ever (2014)


It's almost like modern Christmas specials shouldn't exist. It's possible the 'out of touch' fibers which genetically strangle my DNA are continuing their strict regimen of de-evolution as I become more and more of a cultural bigot, but, most post-millennial specials seem insubstantial - with no genuine message beyond that which is uncomfortably chorfed through acidic flaps of indigestion - stale aftertastes of better and more thought-out times where the season would shine through every time and cast a spell on those eager to believe in the holiday.
Grumpy Cat's Worst Christmas Ever isn't as bad as it could be - for social media and internet culture to have ham-fisted this movie into existence on the worst possible medium (the Lifetime Network) is a deranged holiday miracle unto itself - which is something we should all be excited about (you know the sort of temporary excitement you feel when opening a new bag of Doritos).
There is some loose plot about an expensive dog being stolen by a duo of crooks (who in themselves are so much a parody's parody that they cease to exist as human beings and fade into something akin to white noise) and a little girl's Christmas wish which enables her to hear Grumpy Cat speaking (voiced by Aubrey Plaza, the monotonous funeral dirge of her exhumed face-sounds finally made relevant by the sour and disparaging look of the dwarf cat). The word loose is a credit in reality, as the entire airy spectacle is one enormous summary of the Grumpy Cat phenomenon itself - being that cats are those creatures which rule our subconscious by occupying the 2% of our free web-browsing time when we aren't looking at porn. Combine this infatuation with a cat that looks abnormal (on a scale of weird that leans more toward cute) and fill the remaining space with humanized catch phrases and sentiments and you have a whole lot of money being tossed about to a clueless animal and its handlers.
And it works! The movie was purchased by me! And gave me exactly what I wanted, to look at dopey animals around Christmas time.
It stands to reason that Worst Christmas Ever is a testament to our preoccupation with wallowing in the deep end of the low, reveling in it even - as we are made in the image of God Himself so we do honor the birth of his only son with radical and fanged indulgences of marketable and themed embarrassments and abandonment.
It is what it most certainly was intended to be - as good as an animal-centric movie can be with a sub-tier animal actor on meme-generated crutches who obliviously rests in the shadows of real animal actors like Roddy McDowall and that dog from K-9.

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