![\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/china-movie-AWHGACBYVFHPFED4Y3G356OGGA.jpg\")
<\/p>\nThe new sensation among some Chinese moviegoers is an animated film whose characters appear to have been created with rudimentary 3D animation and have been described as \u201cugly\u201d and \u201ceerie”. <\/p>\n
But it is the scathing online reviews that seem to have prompted interest in Niulai, an animated film about a calf who had a dream about himself growing up with the help of his family, driving a surprising surge at the box office.<\/p>\n
The film earned only about 10,000 yuan (NZ$2523) at the box office in the first 10 days after its August 5 release. On some days, the film took in as little as 200 yuan (NZ$50) at the box office, according to Maoyan, a movie-tracking platform. The figure was exceptionally low, particularly during the competitive summer movie season.<\/p>\n
But its box office surged to 8.2 million yuan (NZ$2 million) Monday, with nearly 300,000 admissions, according to Maoyan. Its total box office has reached 17.1 million yuan (NZ$4.3 million).<\/p>\n
Red Star News, a local news website in Chengdu, reported that the film was made over five years by just two people \u2014 director Xin Yumeng and his mother, Sun Lifan. The Associated Press was unable to reach Xin and could not independently verify this.<\/p>\n
Posters seen at movie theatres featured a calf, hand-drawn in pen without colour, alongside handwritten slogans: \u201cCome on over if you\u2019re into the bizarre\u201d and \u201cNo refunds\u201d.<\/p>\n
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Slide 1 of 2 Previous Next A man walks by a drawing poster promoting a Chinese animated film “Niulai” on display with other movie posters at a cinema in Beijing, Tuesday, Aug. 18, 2026. (Source: Associated Press)<\/p>\n
A ‘terrible’ movie viewers recommend as a prank<\/p>\n
On Douban, a popular Chinese movie-review platform, viewers piled on with mocking and bewildered comments.<\/p>\n
Among the most popular: \u201cunbelievably terrible and eye-opening\u201d, \u201ca symbol of the new internet troll culture\u201d, and \u201ca must-watch for Chinese stock market investors\u201d. The last is a play on the film\u2019s name, “Niulai”, which literally means \u201cthe bull is coming\u201d in Chinese \u2014 a wish for a bull market.<\/p>\n
Comments such as “over nine out of ten”, and \u201cawesome and highly recommended\u201d are also among the sarcastic reactions.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy initial intention has always been to play pranks on my friends,\u201d said Du Mingxi, a 19-year-old college student in Shanghai.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf a friend asks me what I think about the movie, I\u2019d say good and recommend them to watch,\u201d he said, adding that he successfully tricked two friends to watch the movie with him. Both found it fun, but one fell asleep during the viewing.<\/p>\n
Du compared young people going to the movies to see this kind of film to the mysterious \u201csix-seven\u201d craze in the US, saying that some are just drawn to things they find weird or funny, with many jumping on a trend whether they get it or not.<\/p>\n
“They are just the same, it is funny but hard to describe what’s funny about it, and young people just love spreading these memes virally,” said Du.<\/p>\n
Despite the flood of criticism and memes, some viewers didn’t mind the rudimentary production.<\/p>\n
Zhong Jiaming, a vocational schoolteacher in Guangzhou, called it a rare find in an era when movies are often “visually exquisite and polished, but their stories can fail to engage”. <\/p>\n
“This is a movie for the young at heart,” said Zhong. “It is simple and honest, like a bedtime story for children.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The new sensation among some Chinese moviegoers is an animated film whose characters appear to have been created…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":572637,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[2300,156,409,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-572636","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-asia","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572636","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=572636"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572636\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/572637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=572636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=572636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=572636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}