How entertaining?     ★★★★★
Thought provoking? ★★☆☆☆

28 January 2015

This article is a review of THE SATELLITE GIRL AND THE MILK COW.

By Hemanth Kissoon

Seen at the London Film Festival 2014 (For more information, click here.)

“How will I live as a milk cow? My life is over,” Kyeong-cheon

You know you’re onto a winning film, when one of your main characters is a roll of magical toilet paper. He is in fact the reincarnation of Merlin the Wizard. (Any Arthurian legend aficionados might well be up in arms at such an interpretation of the sorcerer.) This animation is as bonkers and intentionally hilarious as to rival THE LEGO MOVIE for anarchic fun.

KITSAT-1 orbits the Earth wanting to learn about humans generally, and in particular pines to meet keyboardist and singer Kyeong-cheon (who is yet to make the big time.) Giving up her job in space, our satellite heroine decends to terra. Meanwhile, a giant, building-sized incinerator (created from people’s fear) is hunting sentient animals living among us. These creatures are in fact broken-hearted men and women that have supernaturally turned into the likes of a zebra or a pig. Not only do they have a homicidal machine after them, together with suffering this bizarre affliction, a teleporting douche, Mr. Oki, is covetous of these creatures’ souls – using a plunger to extract and sell to loan shark, Mr Byun.
 
Merlin temporarily stops the incinerator, and the magic also turns KITSAT-1 into an android young woman, Il-ho, as she crash lands at the same spot as the battle. Il-ho can fly and has an arm that can fire off as a weapon. Young man Kyeong-cheon, melancholic in love, also transforms into a milk cow at this point (not a bull, for extra humiliation). He even sports a farming tag on his ear.
 
Il-ho, Kyeong-cheon and Merlin find each other, all having different and overlapping purposes:
- Il-ho crushing on the newly minted milk cow,
- Kyeong-cheon obviously wanting to reverse his new livestock status, and
- Merlin looking to destroy the incinerator and bring balance to the world.    

At one point Kyeong-cheon goes to the bathroom to do a number two, and Merlin offers some of his toilet paper self, but the greedy milk cow takes a big wad, to the wizard’s chagrin. If you aren’t rolling around on the floor laughing by now, you’ve probably walked out of the cinema/turned off the DVD.
 
Add in Kyeong-cheon’s house-proud pet dog, who cleans in rubber gloves, and you have a list of odd-bods that make NAPOLEON DYNAMITE’s cast seem well-adjusted.
 
Crazy, romantic, laugh-out-loud, this kind of originality is a rare commodity on the screen.

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