Jamie Skinner reviews: The Old Man Movie: Lactopalypse. With his grandchildren (Mikk Mägi, Oskar Lehemaa) visiting, The Old Man (Mägi) must chase down his escaped cow (Märt Avandi) before it explodes due to not being milked, or is killed by a former milker (Jan Uuspõld).

Release date: 2nd June, Cert - 15, Run-time - 1 hour 28 minutes, Director - Mikk Magi, Oskar Lehemaa

If A Town Called Panic had a head-on collision with South Park the result would look something like The Old Man Movie. A crazed barrage of gloriously silly jokes fusing the crude and the absurd as characters try to live the much-celebrated “milk life!” Characters with clumped-together and loosely carved looks, with strong cartoon-like voices to match (largely provided by writer-directors Oskar Lehemaa and Mikk Mägi). There’s plenty on display within the stop-motion animation which heightens the style and simply adds to the utterly bonkers ride which takes place.

The Old Man (Mägi) lives a quiet life of routine at the top of a small village. Every day he goes into his barn, milks his cow (Märt Avandi) - spraying the milk straight from the udder into the jars of waiting customers. However, when his three grandchildren (Mägi and Lehemaa) visit from the city for the summer the cow is quickly set loose when they believe their grandfather is abusing it.

However, when it’s revealed that if a cow isn’t milk it will explode from an overfilled udder the group are crammed onto a tractor in the hope of finding the cow before it’s too late. Or, before the Old Milker (Jan Uuspõld) - a villain who has a fantastically drawn-out evil laugh and is more milk than man - can kill it, preventing a ‘lactopalypse’, having experienced this event many years before.

There’s an undeniably silly premise at the heart of the film, it’s further acknowledged in the gags which come thick and fast throughout. Gags made up of gradual, fast-paced increments of jokes to effectively draw them out and occasionally add something new to the mixture. Yet, amongst all of this you can tell that the creatives involved have taken the film seriously. Yes, the markings of a good time had coming up with the jokes are also there, but you can tell that care and seriousness in actually making sure the film was funny, and good, were in place.

Crudity isn’t present just for the sake of crudity (and there’s a fair deal of it in the short 88-minute run-time, although it’s not relied upon), and you can tell that the film was designed simply to be silly and make people laugh. And it certainly succeeds in doing so, creating plenty of laughs and giggles along the way. The madness is made clear from the very start, and it’s easy to engage with from the opening prologue of a public information film about milk. Yes, maybe the final 15 minutes may be a bit long-winded but there’s still plenty to amuse within the madcap ideas being spun. 

Imagine a film which has the word Lactopalypse in the title. The Old Man Movie is that film. And it’s wonderfully bonkers!

Jamie Skinner, Four stars ****