30 Animated Movies That Are Not for Children

Estonian cinema doesn’t have much of a name worldwide, and Estonian animation even less, but if Mikk Mägi and Oskar Lehemaa’s The Old Man Movie: Lactopalypse is anything to go by, it’s time we started following the country’s output more closely.

The Old Man in question is a country farmer whose grandchildren come to visit him for the summer. He introduces them to hard, gruelling barn work and the milk-loving locals, who come to him daily for fresh milk straight out of the cow’s udder. But when the cow is set loose by one of the children, they must hunt her through farmland and forest in a race against time before her udder goes nuclear and unleashes the lactopalypse.

While on paper the film sounds barmy, the thing itself is crazier than you could ever imagine, using its simple stop-motion animation to achieve a gross, stupid and hilarious aesthetic to match its narrative. The script is Rick and Morty-funny and the visual gags are never-ending, with everything from the straightforward toilet humour of farting a pig (like burping but from the other end) to abstract and surreal sequences set inside a mad bear’s stomach, where all the woodland creatures and an ageing rockstar gather. Mägi and Lehemaa manage to comment on contemporary hipster culture, tradition vs. progression, and animal rights, but The Old Man Movie’s real genius lies in the madcap, free-wheeling nature of it all.