Metacritic-Rezensionen

The hipster moment may have faded fast through repression and attrition, but in Todorovsky's reading, it was crucially formative on today's Russian youth.

The spirited young cast includes the luminous Oksana Akinshina, best known for her title role in Lukas Moodysson's devastating "Lilya 4-Ever," who still lights up the screen like few actresses in the world.

An over-the-top Russian musical about hipsters set in 1950s Moscow, where getting a non-pastel-colored tie is a mafia-mediated operation and a saxophone is considered a concealed weapon? Yes, please.

Light as a bubble, Hipsters suggests that age may catch up with everyone, but that there will always be people fighting against the current of conformity, even if they only express it via how they wear their hair.

When it comes time for a Hollywood remake, Depp would make a great Mels.

Who knows if anything remotely resembling the culture of Hipsters really existed? It's a musical, after all. In any case this movie, which won the 2009 Nika (the Russian Oscar) for best picture, is an endearing curiosity that, at 125 minutes, is as badly in need of a trim as the hair of its comically coiffed dandies.

Punch-drunk, decadently designed slice of eye candy.

Hipsters is also a musical (in an intentionally naive "Absolute Beginners" vein), and while everything looks glinty and gorgeous, the story's political edge is dulled by excessive levity.

Although a massive hit at home, taking approximately $16 million at the wickets, this great-looking but tonally uneven pic won't jive with audiences quite so well anywhere else.

The first Russian musical in more than 50 years, Hipsters is appreciated best as a curiosity.