Cow Belles 2006

Taylor Aly Michalka and Courtney Callum AJ Michalka are two thoroughly spoiled yet well-intentioned sisters whose widower father, Reed Callum Jack Coleman, owns Callum Dairy. Their mother died before the events of the movie; their housekeeper Corrine Jean Yoon helps take care of them now. Taylor has just earned her driver’s license after nearly failing the test at the start, and after a shopping trip they head home only to leave a towel on the stove, sparking a house fire, on top of an earlier mishap where Taylor sinks a friend’s pickup while learning to drive stick. Shocked by their carelessness and overspending, Reed decides the sisters should start earning their own money and puts them to work at the dairy to teach them responsibility. He is away, out of town, searching for a rare butterfly to add to his collection, leaving the sisters to manage the dairy themselves.

At the dairy, things quickly become a mounting nightmare. The sisters bungle almost every step—Courtney’s cell phone ends up in a full yogurt cup, and they trip, splashing blueberries on themselves—while the other employees doubt their capabilities and view them as spoiled outsiders. Then someone steals all the money from the business account, and it falls to the sisters to devise a plan to save the dairy and the livelihoods of the workers, even as everyone doubts them. Taylor contemplates using her party money to cover payroll, a move that could salvage the situation but would strain her relationship with Courtney. In a misguided bid to prove herself, Taylor tricks Courtney into leaving to fetch her cell phone, claiming she’ll secure the money, but the plan backfires. Without Courtney’s input, Taylor uses the party funds to pay the employees, igniting a fierce confrontation between the sisters.

Slowly, the sisters begin to win the trust of the staff through hard work and persistence, and they start to feel more capable in the factory setting. Yet tensions flare again when Courtney focuses on the numbers for expiration dates, and a mishandled batch threatens the dairy’s reputation. Even with the money in hand to cover paychecks, a bad batch of milk—mistakenly believed to be expired—puts the operation at risk of missing a crucial deadline. Reed arrives with volunteers from town—inclunding members of the community who had been at Courtney’s debutante event—and their collective effort helps pull the night through. The mystery of the missing funds is solved when it’s revealed that Reed’s business partner and best friend, Bob Fenwick, is the thief, but he manages to slip away with the money. Reed determines that the dairy will survive, though finances will be tight for the time being, and the girls happily volunteer to keep working alongside him.

In an alternate ending, Courtney uncovers a way to track the embezzler. The sisters present their father with footage of the thief gambling in a casino in Puerto Rico, prompting Reed to alert the FBI. Even with the money recovered, the sisters continue to work at the dairy, hoping one day to truly succeed their father.