Grumpy Cat's Worst Christmas Ever (2014)

In September 2012, a photo of a scowling cat with an underbite landed on Reddit. Within two years, that cat had a Lifetime movie. That is how fast the internet meme economy was moving in the early 2010s, and Grumpy Cat's Worst Christmas Ever is the artifact that moment left behind: a 90-minute Lifetime TV movie starring a real cat, three puppet doubles built by Jim Henson's Creature Shop, Aubrey Plaza doing her best deadpan, and a plot about a Christmas heist at a mall pet store.

It is exactly as absurd as it sounds. It is also, against all reasonable expectation, kind of watchable.

The Premise: A Mall, a Dog Heist, and One Very Grumpy Cat

Grumpy Cat (real name Tardar Sauce) lives unsold in a mall pet store while every other animal gets adopted. Her grumpiness is a defense mechanism, she'll have you know. Nobody wants her. Nobody gets her. Then Chrystal (Megan Charpentier) shows up, a twelve-year-old loner who makes a Christmas wish and discovers she can suddenly hear Grumpy Cat speak.

The "lonely girl who can talk to an animal" setup is straight out of the 1990s family movie playbook. Director Tim Hill knew exactly which shelf he was stocking this on. What keeps it from being entirely formulaic is Grumpy Cat herself, or rather Aubrey Plaza's voice performance, which commits fully to the bit. Plaza reportedly had little knowledge of Grumpy Cat before signing on and had to research the meme to prepare. The research paid off. Her delivery is bone-dry and genuinely funny in places, treating every line as if she resents having to say it.

The plot involves two bumbling criminals who plan to steal a valuable guitar-playing dog from the same pet store on Christmas Eve. It escalates from there into Home Alone-adjacent slapstick. The stakes are low. The production is lower. But the chemistry between Charpentier and the relentlessly deadpan cat narration keeps things moving.

What Grumpy Cat's Worst Christmas Ever Actually Is

This movie is a time capsule of 2014 internet culture, and it knows it. The film is self-aware to the point of breaking the fourth wall repeatedly. Grumpy Cat addresses the audience directly, comments on the plot, and at one point disputes the events unfolding on screen. It is a movie that refuses to take itself seriously, which is the only sensible approach when your lead actor is a cat with feline dwarfism who cannot actually deliver dialogue.

Lifetime spent real money on the production in one key area: the creature effects. Jim Henson's Creature Shop built multiple puppet and animatronic versions of Tardar Sauce for scenes the real cat could not perform. That is not a trivial investment for a Lifetime original. The puppets are convincing enough that most viewers would not clock which shots use the real cat and which use the mechanical double.

The rest of the budget is less impressive. The mall setting is generic. The supporting cast, including Russell Peters as a security guard, does what it can with thin material. The script by Tim Hill and Jeff Morris hits every family-movie beat in the expected order. Nothing here will surprise anyone over the age of ten.

The Meme That Launched a Movie Career (Briefly)

Tardar Sauce became famous because of her permanently grumpy expression, caused by an underbite and feline dwarfism. Her owner Tabatha Bundesen's brother Bryan posted a photo to Reddit on September 22, 2012. The image went viral almost instantly. By 2013, Tabatha had quit her job as a waitress at Red Lobster to manage the cat's commercial commitments full-time.

The Lifetime movie was the peak of that commercial arc. Tardar Sauce died on May 14, 2019, from complications from a urinary tract infection, at age seven. This film remains her only screen credit, and it's a strange one: a real cat playing a fictional version of herself, with a Hollywood actress providing her inner voice, fighting puppet criminals in a fake mall.

The movie pulled 1.7 million viewers on its premiere night, November 29, 2014. Critics were unkind; it sits at 27% on Rotten Tomatoes. But the hate-watching was real and enthusiastic, trending on Twitter the night it aired. Sometimes those are the numbers that matter.

Should You Watch Grumpy Cat's Worst Christmas Ever?

That depends entirely on what you're optimizing for. If you want a well-crafted Christmas movie, watch something else. If you want to understand what happened when internet meme culture and holiday TV production collided at maximum velocity in 2014, this is the primary document.

Aubrey Plaza is funny. The Henson puppets are impressive. The movie is aware of its own absurdity and leans into it rather than pretending to be something more. For 90 minutes of low-stakes, self-deprecating Christmas nonsense, it delivers exactly what it promises. Given that the premise is "Grumpy Cat has a Lifetime movie," that's not nothing.

The final image of Tardar Sauce staring at the camera with her trademark expression, seemingly unimpressed by the entire production she just starred in, is the most honest thing in the film.