The Moo Man

2013

Action / Comedy / Documentary / Drama / Family

1
Rotten Tomatoes Critics - Certified Fresh 83% · 18 reviews
Rotten Tomatoes Audience - Upright 75% · 50 ratings
IMDb Rating 6.9/10 10 225 225

milk dairy farming community farming dairyman dairy farmer

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Plot summary

Modern British dairy farms must get bigger and bigger or go under but Farmer Stephen Hook decides to buck the trend. Instead he chooses to have a great relationship with his small herd of cows and ignore the big supermarkets and dairies. The result is a laugh-out-loud emotional roller-coaster of a film, a heart warming tearjerker about the incredible bonds between man, animal and countryside in a fast disappearing England.

Director

Andy Heathcote Photo
Andy Heathcote

Top cast

Stephen Hook Photo
Stephen Hook as
720p.WEB 1080p.WEB
898.3 MB
1280*714
English 2.0
NR
Subtitles us  
25 fps
1 hr 37 min
Seeds 1
1.63 GB
1920*1072
English 2.0
NR
Subtitles us  
25 fps
1 hr 37 min
Seeds ...

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by bob the moo

Engaging but probably too gentle for its own good

This documentary follows the Hook family farm – a concern with a comparatively small head of cattle and a product of raw (unpasteurized) milk, which sells at a better price than the mass milk we buy for almost no money in the super market. We follow Stephen Hook over several years as he introduces us to his cows, works the farm, deals with injuries, brings new cows into the world and sends others out as beef, worries about the risk of TB and many other challenges.This film got reasonable reviews when it was released but it never saw the inside of the cinema where I live, but I felt better about buying directly online from the official website since I hope more of the money goes to the makers. Moo Man is a title that suggests a light hearted approach rather than being a searing documentary tearing our hearts out for basically being part of a broken world. The title is fair in that way because this is a film that is generally gentle in its approach although this is not to say that it is all sugarcoated material making it look like the cows live forever as equals. I liked that the film is fair about what it shows – it shows affection from Hook for his animals but we see that he never loses site of their role in his cycle and although he is attentive and treats them like more than commercial objects, he is not weeping when he sells one to slaughter for beef. I liked that it avoided being very obviously to that end of the spectrum.However it is near that end to a certain degree. The film is presented with a soundtrack and tone of gently quirky and quaint – encouraging the mood of the film to be warm and jaunty in its tone. Likewise we never really get into really hard territory – certainly we never get a feel for the reality that one family farm shuts every day and we never really get into the grit of what can be done and who is to blame (beyond a bit of a dig at the supermarkets). I understand that it is not this film and as a result didn't go that route, but by staying so light and gentle, while it does engage, it does also feel like it was a very deliberate decision to go a certain way – which of course it was, but I still didn't like feeling it throughout.That said, Moo Man is still a gently engaging documentary even if it is really very gentle in every regard. It ploughs a fairly safe furrow where it touches on everything (the tragic, the comedic, the day-to-day, the pressures) but only touches on all of them, never really pushing too much one director or the other.
Reviewed by

Reviewed by ricardoleith 9 / 10

great picture of modern farming

Of course it doesn't go into all the details of farm life in Britain today, a lot more could be said about how farmers are at the mercy of supermarkets, how the abolition of the milk marketing board was a disaster for dairy farmers, just to increase the profits and power for big business, much as it has in all aspects of modern life - a more balanced argument could made in regard to bovine TB and all the other things we never really consider when pouring out the white stuff over cornflakes; but all in all a great film - no major storyline, action or revelations, just a great way to lose a few hours, and may make you think about what goes into your daily pint.

And as someone from farming stock myself, 'raw' milk - nothing tastes as good - buy (direct from the farmer) whenever you get a chance!

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