Meri Poppins, do svidaniya

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.

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 think this movie is one of these you carry with you all your life. Once you see it, you fall in love. Why it's the number 1 movie in my heart, is that this is my childhood film. You got everything from it: fun, laughter, excitement, tears, warmth. There's lots of reading between the lines. And it is something every kid will understand and accept. I guess i would still cry when Meri Poppins takes the last wind to leave....

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.

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.