Buying the Cow

David Collins has been with Sarah for five years, and she wants to get married. When she leaves for a business trip to New York, she gives him two months to decide whether he will propose or end the relationship. Rather than settle the question quietly, David turns to his womanizing friends, who push him toward bars, clubs and casual encounters before he commits to anything. Their advice backfires as he stumbles through the dating scene and meets a woman who complicates matters further, while Sarah's attractive boss makes his own interest in her known.

Buying the Cow is a 2002 American romantic comedy directed by Walt Becker, who wrote the screenplay with Peter W. Nelson. It was the first of two films Becker directed in 2002, arriving before Wild Hogs, Old Dogs and later family comedies such as Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip and Clifford the Big Red Dog. Jerry O'Connell leads as David, with Bridgette Wilson-Sampras as Sarah, Ryan Reynolds and Bill Bellamy as his friends, and Alyssa Milano and Jon Tenney among a credited cast of twenty-three. Bradley Jenkel and Dan Etheridge produced for Destination Films.

Reception was weak. On IMDb, the film's critics' rating of 3.8 out of 10 from 244 reviews sits noticeably below its TMDB audience rating of 5.1 out of 10 from 124 votes. The 88-minute comedy belongs to a run of broad American studio comedies from the early 2000s.