Niu Lai: Key Takeaways
- Niu Lai turned crude animation and viral ridicule into more than RMB30 million (US$4.5 million) at the box office
- Made over five years, the film found an audience through cheap tickets, communal screenings and online curiosity
- Its handmade imperfections have become a counterpoint to polished AI content
Tacky animation, awful sound design, convoluted plot, but now ranking alongside Spider-Man: Brand New Day and The Odyssey as the China’s biggest summer box office hits.
Niu Lai (牛来, roughly The Bull Comes) follows a newborn calf and its mother through an 86-minute coming-of-age story. Despite looking like it stitched together from a 90’s video game, this week its box office takings passed the RMB30 million mark – about US $4.5 million.
Ticket sales didn’t start so well. The film took around US $1,000 in its first week, viewers put off by its strange – even creepy – animation. Then the very thing that sank its opening week became the engine of wide viral acclaim.
Then the very thing that sank its opening week became the engine of wide viral acclaim
A comic mismatch between its ink-washed posters fuelled the flames, as did ticket prices running as low as RMB 13 (about US $2). People flooded cinemas to see what the fuss was all about, and many have come away charmed.
Niu Lai was made by a mother-and-son team with a background in digital landscape design, not filmmaking. The son, Xin Yumeng (信雨萌) said he spent five years producing the film on second-hand equipment without the aid of AI.
That also seems to be part of the appeal. One Weibo user said in his review ‘At a time when AI imagery has become polished enough to threaten the film industry, isn’t Niu Lai itself a form of resistance?’
Online comments haven’t all been positive. Nor have remarks from state-backed Beijing News, which slated the cinemas showing the film for lowering their standards. However, as another Weibo user put it: ‘However poor the effects, a film that makes audiences laugh is a good film… As comedy, Niu Lai succeeds.’
The Dao view: a refreshing change
‘I have more respect for the shittiest animation made by a human than the most polished animation made by AI.’
Remember Tommy Wiseau’s The Room?Every now and again a film comes along that defies its flaws and becomes a hit. In fact, those flaws are often the very things that make it successful.
That’s exactly what’s happened with Niu Lai, but we can’t ignore the fact that the landscape has changed with AI. In the era of slop, a janky homemade film like this is a charming way to remember that joy can still be found in the imperfect hands of human creation. A widely shared socials comment sums it up nicely. ‘I have more respect for the shittiest animation made by a human than the most polished animation made by AI.’
