Appearances can be deceiving, especially in the film industry. This is what you might expect if movie posters accuratately advertised the content of movies…

Critics are hailing “”Milk”” as the Willy Wonka of the 21st century! Oscar winner Sean Penn delivers a side-splitting performance as Harvey Milk, a billionaire milk magnate who is as infamous as he is reclusive.

The calcite towers of the eccentric milkateer’s famed Lactorium loom industriously over the hard-up cow town of Shamrock Falls, home to precocious ranch hand Billy Udder (Emile Hirsch) and his impoverished family. Day after day, Billy milks the weary teats of his family’s dwindling cowherd, and night after night he watches in rapt curiosity as the village milk-movers collect his day’s labor and disappear behind the ivory gates of the Lactorium. What lies within Milk’s empire is a mystery to all of Shamrock Falls – even Grandpa Udder (Josh Brolin), a former employee of Harvey Milk before the man allegedly fell into madness.

Billy, Grandpa and all of Shamrock Falls are provided with the chance to satisfy their curiosity when Milk announces a golden bottle cap contest that will allow five lucky winners a once-in-a-lifetime tour of the labyrinthian Lactorium.

When fate puts a golden cap in Billy’s calcium-enriched hands, he and Grandpa get a chance to meet the man behind the milk, and a fantastical joyride ensues. The ebullient – if a bit effeminate – Milk treats his guests to a whimsical tour of his factory, showing off the prized inventions that turned man into milk mogul: the sprawling Lake Lactose, a stable of cows that produce chocolate, strawberry and peppermint-flavored milk and even Milk’s top-secret recipe for ultra-high-calcium whipped-cream, rumored to heal decades of bone loss with a single application!

Director Gus Van Sant returns to form in the film’s epic final act, in which Milk’s dark motives are revealed and a slew of growth-hormone-infected cows hunt down and summarily devour the contest winners.

Rated R