Happy Monday, everyone. Normally, I feel like Mondays kick off with a lot of horrible political news that sufficiently depresses me for the rest of the week. I’m sure today’s got that too, but unlike other weeks, today I began my Monday by looking at a bunch of hilarious, poorly drawn cows.
News today is circulating of a Chinese film called Niu Lai (which is both the name of the film’s protagonist and also means “Here Comes the Cow/The Cow Comes”). Niu Lai is, in fact, about a young cow that has a dream in which it learns to be a brave and responsible adult. But critically, this film is known for being very bad. It was made by a mother/son pair on a very low budget, with the two of them handling the production, animation, and acting all themselves.
The animation itself truly is, uh, something, and it’s so ridiculous-looking that the film has become a meme over the last several days and has now become a box office smash in China. According to tracking site Mao Yan (via BBC), it only grossed 7,705 yuan ($1,140) in its first ten days, but now has made over 11.4 million yuan ($1.7 million). It has gone viral on Chinese social media, with people praising it for its terrible quality, making it both humorous but also flying in the face of a growing push for generative AI use in filmmaking.
As a result of this popularity, the BBC reports that a lot of theaters are having to add screenings of Niu Lai to accommodate the surprising demand. However (and this is my favorite bit), the film’s actual promotional poster doesn’t seem to have made the rounds. So employees at theaters are having to draw their own to let theatergoers know they’re showing it. And the results are, frankly, fantastic:
I am obsessed with this. That first one is my favorite, just a Harvest Moon-ass cow face, but the others that look a little closer to the incredibly off-putting animation of the movie itself are also very good and weird.
At the moment, the entire film is up on YouTube, if you want to enjoy almost 90 full minutes of cows that look like that. There are no English subtitles, so you’ll have to rely on context clues to follow along, but it’s worth at least skimming through just to enjoy the absurdity. There are lots of cows, a pack of wolves that attack the cows, a leopard that seems to be a friend to cows, and a bird that’s also around. Every last one of them is incredible.