Holy Cow! Udder madness at viral Chinese moovie screening
Courtesy of Shitty Movie Club.
An inflatable cow sashays its way through the audience and onto the stage, dancing to a sensual melody. The inflatable cow suit parts at its sternum, unzipping to reveal a cow-print bra. It unzips a little lower to reveal four, shockingly anatomically correct udders. Behind the perky udders is a beautiful woman, who sheds the skin of the cow, revealing a cow-print matching lingerie set to continue her chair dance. The bovine burlesque is only the appetizer of a full-course, beefy meal of entertainment.
The main entree is “Niu Lai,” a low-budget independent feature that went viral in China for its notoriously primitive animation. Created by a mother-son duo Xin Yumeng and Sun Lifang, the film opened to a humble quantity of 300 tickets sold in its first 10 days. It has now amassed over $4 million, making it the most profitable film (relative to budget) in cinematic history. On Sunday, The Shitty Movie Club brought it to a big screen in Los Angeles for its Western debut.
In China, moviegoers showed up in record numbers, dressing in overly formal attire for the occasion. American audiences carried the tradition; The Shitty Movie Club drew an impressive crowd to Clifton’s Republic, a restaurant in downtown LA. Even with two floors and plenty of seating, people stood for the entire duration of the film. Commenters pointed out the structural similarities between the animation and traditional Chinese art styles. They also shared tidbits of information, such as the film being animated entirely in an architectural design software. Moviegoers welcomed the film onto the stage with a chant: “Human slop! Human slop! Human slop!”
Many were already familiar with the movie’s viral moments. A drinking game was constructed around iconic dialogue like “Mamaaaaa!” and “Comrades, let’s have a meeting to discuss the migration.” But what is the movie about besides a cow and his cow mom? Well, not much. Niu Lai learns to overcome his fears by befriending a leopard and pushing himself out of his comfort zone. It touches on inspiring themes such as motivation to grow and unlearning prejudice, yet it also works in a possibly unintentional sexual innuendo about a bull’s milk.
The animation is a salad of pixels. The animals look like medieval paintings from before artists had discovered proportions, with oddly expressive faces simply plastered onto the creatures. The backdrop is a vapid layout of pastures and desert, occasionally including land formations like caves and rivers when they’re plot relevant. All the characters are voiced by the two creators.
“Mainstream movies are generally built to deliver what we expect…When someone outside the system makes a movie, they tend to throw out the rulebook,” said Shadie Elnashai, the host of the Shitty Movie Club. “Movies made by committee can seldom communicate the inner workings of an unfathomable mind the way my favorite shitty movies put a single rogue auteur on display.”
The Shitty Movie Club also paused the movie halfway through for an intermission featuring absurdist comic Sethward, dressed in yet another inflatable cow costume, who really wanted to be milked. An audience member was pulled on stage to milk his udders, and it was every bit as uncomfortably phallic as you might think.
The movie resumed for a harrowing final act — in which there were three separate: “You go ahead! I’ll distract them!” fakeouts. And because I seriously advise against watching this movie, I’ll go ahead and spoil the ending. It was all a dream.
The movie itself was a tedious watch; but it was far more about the screening experience than the story itself. With drinking encouraged, many sequences were revisited multiple times as the audience chanted: “Rewind! Rewind! Rewind!” It earned genuine laughs throughout its runtime.
The overexposed bootleg copy of the film was randomly interrupted by a QR code flying across the screen. A tree (yes, in the bar) was covering half the subtitles from my vantage point, yet I felt I was able to understand the Mandarin with my heart. The film provided a comedic experience that truly transcended the language barrier. I asked a Chinese man next to me if I had missed anything, but he was just as confused as I was.
There is something beautifully universal about a bad movie. Especially in a creative climate with the threat of AI looming overhead, audiences seem to be showing up and sitting through the movie out of spite.
“People are worn out by AI-generated slop, especially in China, which is years ahead of us on that curve, and they're ready for some good old-fashioned human-made chaos,” said Elnashai. “In Niu Lai, every strange choice came from a person.”
Chinese and American alike, people want to demonstrate their commitment to the effort of art. And if it means finding ways to enjoy an hour-and-a-half long movie about a cow and his mom, then so be it.
The creators have proudly announced a sequel premiering in 2027.
With love and the utmost admiration, 0 out of 5 paws.