Lil Bub & Friendz is a movie by, about, and for people who love cat videos. That's it. It's that simple. Alongside snippets of Grumpy Cat, Henri the existentialist cat, and, of course, Lil Bub, the movie shows the owners of Internet famous felines talking about merchandise, cat video enthusiasts following Bub around at the Internet Cat Video Film Festival, and (no joke) a "meme manager." Yes, that's an actual job that someone has.The movie highlights the superficiality of the cat video craze, but I don't think it meant to. Full disclosure here: I am only a casual follower of feline happenings on the Internet. I like Grumpy Cat and I know who Lil Bub is, but I'm not the sort of person who would wear one of their (admittedly adorable) faces on a t-shirt. There's only so long I can watch people talk about Lil Bub tote bags and freak out over being in the great cat's presence before it starts to wear thin. There was lip service paid to the psychology behind cat videos, but when your talking heads are coupled with clips from cat jump fail, it can be easy to get distracted. For the most part Internet memes, when they reach a certain level of saturation, become substanceless. Though Lil Bub never addressed this, it was certainly in my mind as I watched it.
But, as I said, this is not that movie. It's a documentary that's part of the cat video craze, not an analysis of it. There's not a lot to it, really. It tries for some emotion near the end—there's a point when you think (gasp) something may have happened to Lil Bub!—but that didn't really work for me. People like to watch cat videos and get emotionally attached to their pets. OK. Cat videos would be a fitting subject for a short doc, but feature-length is pushing it.
But hey, maybe I'm just being all Grumpy Cat because I'm a dog person.
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