The Old Man Movie: Lactopalypse! review – berserk stop-motion comedy is a laugh riot

This Estonian stop-motion animation, based on a popular web series, opens with a ‘50s style PSA, in which we’re told of what disasters occur when a cow escapes the farm and goes unmilked for 24 hours (hint: it is positively nuclear). That serves as the berserk set up for the (sorry not sorry) udderly madcap experience that is The Old Man Movie: Lactopalypse!

The PSA essentially prefaces the plot, where we’re introduced to the Old Man (voiced by director Mikk Mägi), and his grandkids, Aino (the film’s other director, Oskar Lehemaa), Priidik and baby Mart (both Mägi again). Inevitably, the Old Man’s beloved bovine goes walkies, and the gang have to set off to find her, meanwhile having to contend with the psychotic Old Milker (Jan Uuspõld), hell-bent on killing unmilked cows, traumatised by the devastation wreaked on the world when he, as a young man, failed to milk his prize cow.

With spectacles on, one can argue that this is a film all about how mass consumption puts an unsustainable strain on our natural world, leading to suffering for both man and animal. But ultimately this is a film in which one character has to convince an Axl Rose-type musician to sing him and a crew of woodland animals out a bear’s asshole (that the singer is played by Estonian rock star Jaagup Kreem, playing himself, and surely chosen solely on the basis of his name, just adds absurdity on top of absurdity). The humour is utterly puerile and childish, and all the better for it. This is delightful stuff.

The easiest comparison is to 2009's A Town Called Panic, itself also based on a Belgian children’s series; Lactopalypse doesn’t quite approach the same level of sugar-rush psychosis, but it’s not far off. Unlike A Town Called Panic though, this one’s definitely not for kids: there are plenty of impalings, and more than one joke based around the sexual double-meaning of milking. Not much of the milk of human kindness to be found here.

The stop-motion work is critical to the film’s charms. Stop-motion can be wonderfully tactile and intricate, but it is rarely this gooey and squelchy. Milk frequently looks like… well, y’know. Characters spittle across each other when talking and/or shouting. Weird liquids ooze out of every object that gets poked. The facial models for the characters are designed with one expression each, with only their eyes moving around (the animals are given more facial expressions). Paired with the hyperactive, expressive voice-acting (an excellent job across the entire cast – this film really deserves to be seen in the original Estonian), it leads to a hilariously discombobulating experience, as frantic voices of panic and nutty one-liners collide against unmoving, befuddled faces.

The end result is a maddeningly immature and hilarious film. But consider the absurdity that humans are the only animal to drink the milk of another mammal, and ask yourself – what’s truly absurd here?

The Old Man Movie: Lactopalypse is released in UK cinemas on June 2.