zimka

This is one of the movies Russians were practically forced to watch in the early days of television, as there were only a couple of state channels and not much choice. The tradition of watching this and other comedies gradually substituted quality with mass hysteria and, more importantly, habit.

Even today many people enjoy watching it, subconsciously not understanding that it is nostalgia for the past they feel, not joy of watching a quality comedy.

Really, though, the script is horrible and the fact that this pulp of a movie is based on Bulgakov's story just adds insult to the injury. Bulgakov - pulp?! Even idea seems ridiculous, yet, here it is. The comedy itself comes from a lot of slapstick, in very low intelligence ways, like making fun of lisps or speed-up movements, ala Benny Hill. The cinematography is sickening yellowish, for some reason really loved by Gaidai (director). Yet, the worst is acting, or likely directing, which forced such acting. Characters can freely speak to the camera and behave like complete idiots. How could actors play well in such movie is beyond me and apparently beyond them as well, so they do not even try. They just make faces and deliver their lines.

Which is the only saving grace of this whole farce. The film has become a well of one-liners over the years.

All in all, if you enjoy other comedies created by Gaidai, this can even be considered one of his best, so watch it with no worries, as it has all of his safe trademarks. But if you don't or simply don't know what kind of films Gaidai did, I can summarize them to you in two words - Soviet Kitsch.

I couldn't care less about the arranged marriages and this film has done NOTHING for me, to change my perception.

In fact, this film is bad in a worst possible way - instead of watching it and following the plot and the characters, the viewer has to endure a torture of deciding what aspect of the film was done the worst.

The dialog is absolutely unrealistic ans is delivered as if it was read from the cue cards by people with bad sight (they pause before almost every sentence). The music is distractingly secondary punctuated, again, by the bad dialog. The pacing is the worst of all, though. I swear, I was ready to kill myself watching this slow bore and didn't do so, because I wanted to see how far it will go into rotten territory. Overall, I'd blame all of the faults on director. He should not be allowed before the camera ever again.

The only saving grace is the acting. Again, it was pretty painful to see that the actors actually ARE GOOD, but subjected to spit out the garbage they are given.

Don't bother. Really. One of the worst movies ever made. Seriously.

This movie is basically 'who's who' in Russian movie industry today. Some of the actors appear for no reason at all and their characters could be skipped all together. Take Andrey Panin, Tatiana Dogileva or Renata Letvinova (!!!) They are all established stars, so what the hell were they doing there? But those are only bit parts. ALL of the characters (and the line-up seems to be never-ending) are played by famous Russian theater, TV, film and music stars. Even Oscar winner and "Russian Spielberg", Nikita Mikhalkov is here! I bet the rest of productions in Moscow were shut down, due to shortage of stars. So, once again, what were they doing there?

The answer is simple - they all were there to have fun. While it might have been OK elsewhere, it's somewhat distracting here. The movie takes cues from Guy Ritchie's productions like Snatch and most likely Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, as the plot throws all sorts of different groups of characters in different situations and then makes them interact with each other. There are numerous similarities between the two movies, including drugs plot-line, inclusion of dimwitted criminals, several gangs, etc. But the difference is - Guy Ritchie knows what a subtlety is and it seems that Alexei Balabanov doesn't. They both play with violence, but Balabanov approaches it like a maniac hungry for blood. Maybe he should have made a gory horror movie instead?

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for gore and blood, if it's appropriately set up and done. But when we get two consecutive graphic shots to the head (Russian roulette style)... it's not funny, or witty, or stylish, or anything! In fact, it achieves only one thing - destroys the mood.

The ending of the film is by far it's weakest part. It was quick, absurd and completely unsatisfactory. A terribly overlong scene leads up to it, so when it is over, I bet many people scratched their heads and wandered why the film-makers bothered to set it up so meticulously.

All of the shortcomings notwithstanding, it was a fairly fun movie, with a lot funny moments and lines. Heavy-handed direction by Alexei Balabanov didn't bother much, as all of the attention is given to action and characters. Most of the actors did fantastic jobs, especially the three leads – Alexei Panin, Dmitri Dyuzhev and Nikita Mikhalkov. I wish a bit more time was spend in the editing room and some 25 liters of fake blood (of reported 50) would be cut, as well as several minutes of the film. Then it could have been perfect and standing on it's own against it's American and British counterparts.