When you grew up watching Looney Tunes cartoons on TV, you understood that animation was the domain of the visually weird. Anything could happen as long as Tex Avery and Chuck Jones could figure out how to draw, paint and bring it to motion. And you accepted this weirdness because it was part of the flow. Over the decades the weirdness has been tamed and not by the artists. It’s the folks in marketing that who bust into preview screenings, track down the animators and scream that they can’t do that because it doesn’t correspond with the Funko Pop they released exclusively to Think Geek. Disney doesn’t want you to implode the theme park ride that’s about to revitalize EPCOT. It’s so rare that a creatively weird project can escape pre-production without it getting tamed and explained so that nobody just has to accept the weirdness as weirdness. Satellite Girl and Milk Cow drips with the weirdness
Above the Earth circles a lonely satellite that is becoming sentient. As it ponders humanity and love, it hears a boy’s love song. As it falls to land, the satellite transforms into a robot girl named Cat-1. It’s mission is to find the boy and learn more. What Cat-1 doesn’t know is that the boy singer was cursed when his girlfriend broke up with him after writing and performing the wonderful song. It’s not just any curse, he’s turned into a cow that can walk on two hooves and give milk. He wants to be a teenage boy again. Cat-1 gets help from a descendant of Merlin whose been turned into a walking and talking roll of toilet paper. Did I mention there’s a roaming incinerator that’s grabbing and burning folks in the neighborhood? There’s other odd moments that are as weird yet don’t derail the adventure because the weirdness flows.
Satellite Girl and Milk Cow does its best to keep it’s weirdness from going all over the place
by anchoring in humanity and a desire to understand the weirdness that is love. Director Jang Hyung-yun and his crew have made a film that can be appreciated without losing the audience in the visuals. The film is about how can a boy cursed into being a cow find a bond with a girl that’s a robot rocket and avoid being eaten by an incinerator. And such a weird premise works.
The video is 1.78:1 anamorphic. The 1080p resolution brings out the detail in a talking roll of toilet paper. The audio is DTS-HD 5.1 for both the English dub and the original Korean soundtrack. The movie is subtitled in English.
DVD with movie and bonus features.
Coffee Vending Machine and It’s Sword (29:52) is a short by director Hyung-yun Chang from 2007. It’s about a boy who turns into a coffee vending machine and girl. The audio is Korean with English subtitles.
Trailers (3:09) give a glimpse of what to expect.
GKIDS and Shout! Factory presents Satellite Girl and Milk Cow. Directed by: Hyung-yun Chang. Screenplay by: Hyung-yun Chang. Starring: Daniel J Edwards, Ryan Bartley and Kirk Thornton. Rated: Not. Running Time: 81 minutes. Released: June 5, 2018.