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The ‘Worst Animated Movie Ever’ Is Somehow Becoming a Box Office Hit

‘Niu Lai’ was practically unseen until its bizarre animation went viral, turning the tiny two-person production into a surprise hit.

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If any lesson can be taken from the extremely, laughably ugly animated film Niu Lai, as it dominates the Chinese box office, blowing Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey out of the water, it’s probably that people will always love a viral, memeable disaster just as much, if not more, than a meticulously crafted masterwork. And they will come out in droves so they, too, can be in on the joke.

Niu Lai is an 86-minute animated film about a newborn calf learning life lessons or some such s—t. It went from making roughly 7,700 yuan in its first 10 days to more than 14.9 million yuan, according to The Guardian, after social media turned the too-earnest-and-scrappy-for-its-own-good movie into a national joke.

If you haven’t seen any footage, it looks like the animation you see in a late-90s........

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