Movie Review: The Old Man Movie

What to say about this Estonian stop motion animation film? Feels like a loaded question, I suppose the best way to describe it would be gonzo. Let me set the stage. The Old Man is prefaced with a flash back that introduces the Old Milkman, a prosperous dairy farmer who one day failed to milk his cow for 24 hours. This resulted in something like a nuclear explosion, referred to as a lactpocalypse. This sets up the bizarre danger of this world and the embittered Old Milkman as a transformed mutant of milk (much like how radiation created mutants in the films of the 50s) creating the primary villain of the film.

Then we are introduced to the protagonists. Three city children are dropped in the countryside to stay with their grandfather for the summer. Grandfather is strange to say the least but has become every bit as famous and necessary to the village as the Old Milkman. The children, who appear to range in age from 6 to 10, accidentally let Grandfather’s cow escape the far and now the movie is a race to find and milk the cow either before it explodes or before the Old Milkman can chop off its head to save the village.

From this point forward we leave what little sanity the film had at the door as the hunt goes on. This film is bizarre at best, the logic of this world is straight out of Alice In Wonderland. “We’re all mad here” would certainly apply to most of the goings on. The Old Man Movie is initially quite unsettling once you move past the intro flashback. The puppets in the film have a desperately uncanny valley feel to them, there is a lack of humanity and yet the characters in the film can be empathized with. The animation is great and I can appreciate the love and work that went into it but other then the never blinking eyes the faces are frozen masks, speaking in their disembodied voices. Its such a bizarre disconnect that leaves you wondering just what a character is thinking or feeling and I couldn’t help but expect the film to erupt into an orgy of violence at any moment. I was not wrong, it did, but not in the manner I expected.

This movie can be easily classified as a comedy, there are plenty of funny moments here. Hippies in the woods who don’t know what a cow is, vodka powered tractors, villagers who are milk addicts and a rock star living in a bear’s ass. There’s situation and character humor but also a metric ton of gross out humor in a way that would make The Ren and Stimpy Show proud. I don’t think I’ve seen anything quite so bizarre since Takashi Mike’s Gozu. If you took the animations and films of Billy Plimpton and turned them sideways and added a serious amount of horror movie staging you might begin to understand the experience before watching the movie for yourself. This is Wallace and Gromit by way of heavy blotter acid with a dose of magic mushrooms.

The Old Man Movie manages the impressive feat of being equal parts funny, gross, sexual, disturbing and surprisingly heartwarming as the characters all have personal growth arcs. Grandfather learns to treat his animals better, the children are forced to unplug from their cell phones and have a real life adventure. This movie is unashamedly weird but there is heart and humor here and even moments of existential crisis and heartbreak. When all is said and done, I really enjoyed it.

The movie can be watched in both Estonian (with subtitles in English if needed) as well as English dubbed. I watched it both ways to see if the dialogue was changed in translation and I didn’t notice a significant deviation in the subtitles. The voice acting is good, with the English dubs were entertaining though I wasn’t sure about the accent used. It often came across as a charicature of a Swedish accent but not being familiar with Estonian culture I can’t say how accurate this is, but in a film this over the top it may have been intentional. The image quality on the Blu-Ray is superb and I was delighted that it was in 2:35:1 aspect ratio for a real cinematic experience. The film clock in at 88 minutes and is recorded in 5.1 surround sound.

This movie isn’t going to be to everyone’s taste (and not recommended for children due to sexual themes/moments), but if you like your humor on the extreme side and your animation to be somewhat unsettling I think you’ll find a movie that’s still entertaining and relatable in spite of its excesses.

SCIRE: 4.5 out of 5

Directed by OSKAR LEHEMAA, MIKK MÄGI

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