Backbencher

This film was between stupid and clever.” Harry Sinclair, the writer and director of The Price of Milk, desperately wants his film to be a clever and as if you were in a fantasy, but the movie instead comes off as artificial and forced.

Though it may look like our world, The Price of Milk transpires in some kind of a fantasyland where people can disappear in the blink of an eye and car accidents are normal. Our protagonists are Lucinda (Danielle Cormack) and Rob (Karl Urban), a pair of loving oddballs who make a living milking 117 cows. One day, Rob proposes marriage to Lucinda, which initially makes her quite happy, but when she has some time to think it over, she realizes that the spark in their relationship isn’t what it once was. Lucinda decides that the only way to determine whether or not Rob really loves her is to test him, which she does by selling his cows. The remainder of the film is chock full of bizarre occurrences and quirky characters.

The Price of Milk has a certain amount of charm – this has got to be the first film in history featuring an agoraphobic dog – but really, the entire thing is just too slight and too off-the-wall to ever become anything more than a mildly entertaining piece of fluff. As hard as Sinclair tries, he just can’t seem to convincingly create this idealized world but for a while, it does work in a Dr. Seuss kind of way. The isolationist lifestyle of the two central characters is compelling enough to keep things interesting for a while, but after the ridiculous events of the film start piling up, the story just falls apart.

It’s hard to imagine who The Price of Milk is supposed to appeal to. Aside from 12-year-old girls who play with Barbie dolls and believe in idealized love, the film will have the majority of audiences rolling their eyes way to much.