The Real Appeal of the Internet’s Favorite Terrible Movie

One of the only compliments I can offer the new Chinese animated film Niu Lai is that it certainly qualifies as a film. There is sound. The pictures move. But beyond the basics of what makes a movie a movie, Niu Lai, which translates to “The Ox Comes,” contains little artistic merit. The plot, about a calf coming of age with the help of a leopard, a bird, and his mother, is thin, and the characters have been so nightmarishly rendered on a rudimentary computer program that they might as well be…