It was supposed to be the best screen version of the beloved book and had everything going for it: brilliant Mark Zakharov - one of the best and most talented Soviet stage directors ("Til'", Yunona i Avos'" and "Zvezda i smert Khoakina Muryety" on the stage of Moscow Lenkom Theatre.) He has made the best TV movies I can think of: " An Ordinary Miracle" (1978), "That Munchhausen " (1979), "Formula lyubvi" (1984) and the terrific adaptation of "To Kill a Dragon" (1988), his only film for big screen. Unique Andrei Mironov is Ostap; Zinoviy Gerdt narrates the sparkling text; Rollan Bykov, Anatoly Papanov, and Oleg Tabakov (to name just a few great actors) star. Gennadiy Gladkov, the musical genius who wrote the scores and the songs for all Zakharov's films and for "Gentlemeny udachy" (1972), "Bremenskie muzykanty" (1969) and for "Malysh i Karlson" (1970), created the beautiful and stylish as usual score but the movie did not work. It is slow, boring, and pretentious. I really wanted to love it, I was so ready to love it but I could not. Why or why did Zakharov decide to repeat some of the scenes over and over again? Why or why did Mironov play Ostap as a walking zombie with the mascara on his eyes? Why or why the immortal jokes that had been narrated to us did not work as well as they did when we read them? The movie is not a complete failure but with all the talent involved, it could have been much better.
5/10
5/10