This is the story of a not-that-bright man (who bears a slight resemblance to Steven Colbert) pursuing his dream of making artisinal goat cheese. It is not a comedy about the trials of trying to keep goats as housepets.
He is so clueless, the first milk goat he buys is male. He gets no support. His girlfriend wants him to slog away at a mind-numbing laboratory job. She has no sympathy at all for his desire to escape.
One of the best scenes in the movie is a conversation with a hermit landowner who had dreamt all his life of raising basset hounds. It failed miserably and now he just wants to die.
The only person who gives him the least encouragement is a failed paranoid restaurant owner.
It is comedy, so you know he must inevitably triumph. He persists at making cheese, getting smarter and smarter with each attempt, so it is not totally out of blue when he finally succeeds. He has some help from a celestial holy French-speaking goat and a celestial holy writer of cheese text books.
The goats don't pay that big a role but when they are on screen they are delicate, clean and pretty. Usually the idea of cheese coming from animal udders is quite revolting, but these animals don't do that to me.
It is done in a melodramatic, over-the-top, pantomime style.
If I were writing the film, our hero would run off into the sunset with the German restaurant owner who had stuck by the hero, not the woman who bullied, carped, belittled and repeatedly abandoned him. But that would have freaked out the majority of the audience. He is in for a life of misery with her. He is a kind soul. He deserves better.
