All your cow are belong to us!

reviewed Sat, 31 Mar 2001

A quirky, loopy fable about love, The Price of Milk is set in the gorgeous New Zealand countryside, all rolling hills and lush green grass.  Rob (Karl Urban) and Lucinda (Danielle Cormack) are a giddily happy young couple living in a beat-up shack and running a decrepit dairy farm with 117 cows, each of whom Rob knows on a personal basis.  But, even after Rob asks her to marry him, Lucinda is convinced that their relationship is in trouble, all evidence to the contrary, and on the Cosmo-inspired advice of her dippy-hippy friend Drosophila (Willa O'Neill), she begins picking fights with him to try to revive the spark.  She goes too far when their beloved quilt is stolen by a pugnacious old Maori woman, and she trades away all of Rob's cows to get it back.  Now she has to figure out how to get back the cows -- and Rob.

The film is charming and engaging with goofy comic touches (somehow, the sight of the agoraphobic dog trotting around under his cardboard box never gets old, and the way they make a ratty, faded, red fur hat seem menacing is hilarious).  But I wasn't too thrilled by its depiction of women -- Lucinda is a twit who can't be happy with her seemingly flawless relationship; she has to pick at it until it unravels.  Drosophila is a lying, backstabbing slut.  The mystical Maori woman who sets the plot in motion is greedy and selfish (although she later becomes more of a benevolent, guiding spirit).  It's lovely to see how devoted Lucinda and Rob finally are to each other and the lengths to which Lucinda goes to win him back (the "Jacksons" trick is especially cute), but I was really annoyed by the way she felt she had to "test" his love for her when she'd never seen anything to suggest it might be wanting.

Still, if you can set that aside (and I did), The Price of Milk is a daffy, unusual, pretty film.  The clever, winsome opening title sequence will let you know right away if you'll like the movie or not.  Recommended.

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