Watched: NPN 12/07/2025, MC 12/14/2025
Format: YouTube/ YouTube
Viewing: First for both
Director: Rick Dealup/ Steve Rudzinski
As we near Christmas, we did two quick watches with Dug and K to get ourselves in the Christmas Spirit. The first was North Pole Nutrias (2002), a puppet-show running about 26 minutes and created by New Orleans-based pair Quintron and Miss Pussycat. The second was a little indie movie out of Pittsburgh called A Meowy Christmas from 2018. This one runs about 55 minutes, but feels like it's about 6 days.
While watching North Pole Nutrias, I learned not everyone knows what a Nutria is - which is a large-ish rodent that lives along rivers and near water. They've invaded the waterways for New Orleans and cause enough problems that there's been a bounty on the animals. But!
North Pole Nutrias is, apparently, a bit of a holiday tradition for the hep cats of New Orleans, and I get it. It's a puppet show, shot on tape, and has some distinct vibes of music and art scenes of the late 90's. Kind of an embracing of the media we'd grown up on - specials like Emmett Otter's Jug Band Christmas - but made with an intentional lo-fi feel and hand-made aesthetic. Think Pee-Wee's Playhouse, that you know through the glossed up version and are just used to.
For me, personally, North Pole Nutrias is sort of an extended version of the kind of stuff that I recall showing up on Austin Access back in college. It's people making art for fun, and it doesn't matter if anyone else gets it. And, I mean, the effort here is kind of incredible. There's whole sets built for the puppets, and crowd scenes, and establishing shots.
You can definitely look at the show and say "this is terrible", but it's also knowingly terrible in some respects, but still sticking the landing, which is a very narrow channel to pass through. And I think the Nutrias nail it.
The plot is that two Nutrias win an all-expenses-paid trip to the North Pole. When they arrive, they find out a Virus is destroying all the toys, making them slimy. After attending a music program (featuring Quintron and Miss Kitty) they decide to get around the Virus's anti-toy mechanism by sending all the kids a drum machine, which is a *tool*. Amazing.
But don't take my word for it:
Yeah, it's awkward and goofy, but that's sort of the point.
This one hit me in my 90's-era film school heart. I miss creative people just making things in a barely-digital age to get a laugh and freak out the squares.
Apparently this thing is a regional cult favorite in New Orleans and still circulates. Here's a link to the official website.
Far more confusing is the 56 minute opus - A Meowy Christmas (2017).
I have no idea who this is for or why it exists. But it is also the first of about a dozen "movies" made by Steve Rudzinski - and to him I say, if this makes you happy, keep doing it.
But.
A Meowy Christmas is a near-hour of trying to figure out if the star/writer/ director/ editor is kidding and knows exactly what he has. Is this intentionally like this? And if so, why? And if not, why does he keep doing it?
The plot is that our hero, Wally Griswold, is a cop with a pet cat and a pet rat. He (a) meets a dame/robbery victim, who entrusts him to protect a rare and expensive jewel. Meanwhile, (b) the thieves are still performing break-ins to fund a move to the Caribbean. Along the way (c) the cat is an InfoWars junky and thinks aliens are coming to invade.
It's lots of footage of a cute cat and rat just doing their thing, with people voicing over the video with Look Who's Talking!-style voice acting. A real highlight is Rudzinski subbing in his own hands in socks to show what the cat is up to.
All of this is supposed to be funny? Maybe?
Every cut is 3x longer than necessary, and mostly people doing bits from other things. Watching our lead is like watching a middle-schooler trying to do Jim Carrey from 1994. Like, it's clearly a pastiche on multiple fronts, so is it a bad thing that I know he stole that joke from Ghostbusters? I don't know. It would help if the line delivery had any spark of life to it from anyone.
It's just really tough to watch. So much dead air. So little understanding of how cameras work.
I kept thinking of my one viewing of Freddy Got Fingered where - yeah, it's a horrible movie, but for what Tom Green was trying to accomplish, it's a slam dunk. He was trolling people for watching his movie.
Is this that? Or is it... the alternative?
The thing about watching something like this is that it will make you start feeling queasy after a while. Sort of like sitting through a Christmas Pageant put on by kids who are not your own - you're just going to have to endure it, no matter how awkward and incompetent and slow and grating it is.
I am also not sure this guy knew what the word "gams" means, and he kept using it, and refused to show us the gams in question.
The movie ends with the cat and rat setting up the house with traps, because Christmas now means "remember Home Alone? Millennials sure as shit do."
In a way, both of the movies are outsider art. Miss Pussycat's puppets are not exactly out of the Henson creature shop, and no one will mistake Rudzinski as a film school graduate. But one embraces the vibe and comes through it with a surprisingly entertaining bit of Christmas chaos, while the other... I can't really recommend.
I am a little sorry about A Meowy Christmas.
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