Meri Poppins, do svidaniya

There are some movies that stay for eternity in your heart. This is kind of such moves - half-musical, giving your hope, with most beautiful film music I have ever heard. What a pity, this movie is so little known.

The movie is made in times of perestroika's beginning - the whole Soviet world was waiting for something new and fresh. This movie has its freshness, but this freshness is also actual for our days.

Check it out - you'll be really happy to know that move, I bet!

Sometimes, if I have depression or stress, I sing to myself the optimistic song from this movie "Wind of Changes".

This is really warm and wise song, that let you feel the essence of your life. I cannot really describe the feelings, you get while of watching this movie.

I saw that movie when I was about 7 or 8 years old. It was amazing movie for me. Handsome Mary Poppins (I didn't know then that it was Natalya Andreichenko, one of the most beautiful Russian actress in the 80's), imposing Cat-dancer and incredible Miss Andrew (this role was played by the greatest actor Oled Tabakov). Moreover, all the roles in this movie are played by very famous Russian stars. The atmosphere of fairy-tale stays even after movie watching. Songs and music are still moving to tears because the memory goes back to the childhood. I remember one moment well - balloons lying in the light of a lantern on the cobblestone pavement and sounds the song about the colour dreams which only children can see. I really like that movie and advice to watch it.

According to opinion of western people, Soviet Union was absolutely totalitarian regime where everything was under propaganda, red dictatorship, etc. But at the same time there was great movie industry. Just look, how Soviet movie-makers show Britain, and they do not position British people or country as something negative, but would Americans or British make movie where events are happening in Soviet Union of 80-s or 70-s forgetting about Cold War realities, and just concentrating on art itself? By the way, one of comments was about Perestroika beginning. Actually 1983 year had nothing common with Perestoika because Perestroika begun in 1985, while in 1983 USSR was ruled by KGB man Yuri Andropov, and Gorbachev came to power only in 1985 March.

If you're expecting something "classical", "a la Disney" don't watch this TV series. It's a really mad version of well known Poppins saga. Everything is happening somewhere in early 80's (very good design by the way) in a idyllic suburbia filled with really abnormal people. And Poppins is landing and making everything even more crazy! She's able too screen hallucinations, "make dreams come true" etc. The movie is filled with pop songs, dance numbers etc. Actually this kind of "children movies" were quite typical in SU in 80's. Surreal, crazy, filled with pop songs. I was preteen boy then and didn't understand them at all but now I think they were hilarious.

People who like obscure movies probably know that Turkey made a bunch of no-budget versions of famous American movies: "The Wizard of Oz", "The Exorcist" and "ET", to name a few.

I had assumed that the Turkish rip-offs were the weirdest possible movies. However, I didn't know that the Soviet Union made its own version of "Mary Poppins"! "Meri Poppins, do svidaniya" has to be the most whacked-out movie ever made. A dancing cat, an animated statue, and so-bad-it's-good '80s music (yes, somehow the Soviet Union got its hands on that) all in one movie. Seriously, this flick is like a combination of a "Weird Al" Yankovic song, and something created by Hunter S. Thompson. To be certain, the Bert character - played by Dick Van Dyke in the more famous version - looks like a cross between Elliott Gould and Keith Richards; when they first showed him, I thought that it was someone in a Michael Myers mask (that's the killer in the "Halloween" movies, not the guy who played Austin Powers).

All in all, this is the sort of movie that could seemingly appear on "Mystery Science Theater 3000". I, for one, consider this flick to cool for that (I would have put the more famous version on "MST3K" in a second). This is one movie like nothing that you've ever seen.

PS: Mrs. Andrew was played by a man in drag. It surprises me that they were allowed to do that in the Soviet Union, where homosexuality was illegal.