For such an outright vulgarity to emerge, one had to try very hard.
The film 'The Incredible Adventures of Shurik' has been released. This is already the fourth consecutive New Year's project from the TNT channel that uses the creative legacy of outstanding comedy writers for purely selfish purposes. Previously, the TNT broadcast featured the sadly memorable works 'Self-Irony of Fate' (2022), 'Ivan Vasilyevich Changes Everything' (2023), and 'The Diamond Arm' (2024). Now, the enterprising television producers have decided to monetize the spectacle they filmed as a two-hour movie for theatrical release. It is clear that this venture was unlikely to yield anything decent. But for such an outright vulgarity to emerge, one had to try very hard.
The directors, as before, were Roman Kim and Misha Semichev, with the screenplay written by Andrey Shelkov and Maxim Tkachenko. The film was graced by the high patronage of the producer and director of the TNT channel, Tina Kandelaki. On the eve of the premiere, she promised a trendy, cozy, bright, and nostalgic New Year's comedy on social media.
'The Incredible Adventures of Shurik,' intoned Tinatin Givievna, 'is not stitched together with white threads. It is not a patchwork quilt of random references, but a cohesive authorial canvas where modern humor intertwines with a love for world and domestic classics.' The general producer of the media company Arkadiy Vodakhov added that the project contains many experiments—from visual techniques to unexpected cameos—and is a 'great New Year's gift for viewers.'
Self-promotion is a familiar, contagious, and seemingly no longer shameful thing in our times. But let's see what the authors actually managed to produce.
The film begins with a close-up of actor-showman Timur Batyrtdinov, who at the respectable age of 47, in an untidy yellow-red wig and with a face marked by deep wrinkles, portrays the eternally young Shurik from the famous comedies of Leonid Gaidai. Poor Shurik sits on a bench at a bus stop somewhere in a southern city, telling everyone who briefly sits next to him the sorrowful story of his unfortunate love for a student, athlete, Komsomol member, beauty, and now also a video blogger named Nina. The audience becomes listeners to his strange confession for an adult man.
Externally, the film follows the plot of 'The Caucasian Captive,' although fans of Gaidai's masterpiece will be shocked by the inexplicably strange alterations of most of the plot lines of the old good film. It is enough to say that instead of the hilarious comedic trio consisting of Trus, Balbes, and Byvaly, in the current 'Incredible Adventures,' there is a trio of incomprehensible and indistinguishable girls, one of whom will be remembered only for her generously injected silicone lips and a bust that is unfortunately not of the freshest quality trying to escape from her blouse.
The image of Nina, played by Marina Kravets, also turned out to be pale, as she diligently copies the facial expressions, gestures, and smile of Natalia Varley, thus exhausting her creative task. And in the sluggish, slow Shurik throughout the film, there will be no lightness, charm, wit, or resourcefulness that Gaidai's hero, played by Alexander Demyanenko, possessed in full measure. As for comrade Saakhov (Garik Martirosyan) and his henchmen, they fuss with excessive zeal. Such is the actor's cacophony:
One Gaidai as an innocent victim of his unquenched creative ambitions seemed insufficient to the creators of this screen remake. They decided to dilute the film with references to dozens of other famous films. Among them are not only beloved domestic films such as 'Office Romance,' 'Gentlemen of Fortune,' 'Mary Poppins, Goodbye,' 'The Adventures of Elektronik,' 'The Twelve Chairs,' but also foreign hits—'Forrest Gump,' 'The Devil Wears Prada,' 'The Shawshank Redemption,' 'The Godfather,' 'Ocean's Eleven,' etc. Shurik, in accordance with the plots of the films borrowed for parodying, will have to not only kidnap the bride but also work in an office, rob a bank, spend time in prison, escape from it, and even fly into space instead of the Belka and Strelka, to the great astonishment of chief designer Sergey Korolev (Yuri Kuznetsov).
All these silly, dramaturgically unmotivated adventures of Shurik and other equally strange, otherworldly characters are interspersed in the film with musical numbers featuring lively songs and dances. Here you have Philip Kirkorov covering Valery Leontyev's 'Deltaplan,' the unsinkable Larisa Dolina performing the song by Instasamka 'For Money—Yes,' and Polina Gagarina with Dima Bilan, and Sergey Lazarev, and Anna Asti, and Klava Koka, and everyone else. The creators of the film take pride in having managed to recruit over 50 media stars of various calibers for the shoot: actors, showmen, singers, dancers, bloggers, and psychics. Of course, Olga Buzova also makes an appearance, but at least she doesn't sing in the film; she just consumes 'Dubai chocolate' in large quantities, which, believe me, doesn't make it any easier.
As a result, it turned out to be not a film, but a kind of screen vinaigrette, another version of 'Old Songs About the Main,' which may be digestible as a light television spectacle while preparing New Year's salads, but what does it have to do with the delicate muse of cinema? 'The Incredible Adventures' do not qualify as a film comedy, as they turned out to be absolutely not funny. They have nothing to do with a musical, as the music videos are not supported by the film's dramaturgy and remain as insertions, like artificial teeth. And this is certainly not a parody of classic films, as dwarfs and pygmies cannot, by definition, parody giants.
The authors of the film may argue: if you don't like it, don't watch it, yet 'The Incredible Adventures' earned 120 million rubles in its first weekend and became the box office leader. But, firstly, this is a rather modest sum—three to four times less than a truly successful start. And secondly, the factor of simple human curiosity has not been canceled: it is always interesting to compare how it was and what it has become. This is what the creators of 'Adventures' built their calculation on. I watched the film in a relatively full cinema hall. However, during the supposedly comedic plot, I did not hear bursts of joyful laughter, and upon exiting the cinema, I did not see happy faces from the encounter with high art. On the eve of the New Year, viewers hoped to charge themselves with a festive mood in the cinema, but unfortunately, it turned out as it has lately.
TNT director Tina Kandelaki shared her creative plans for the next year. With approximately the same creative team, the channel will take on reinterpreting 'The Master and Margarita'—the famous novel by Mikhail Bulgakov. 'Conceptually, the idea is this: 'The Master and Margarita,' but set in the 90s—with all the cultural codes, gangster patterns, and recognizable images from 'The Word of a Guy,' the films 'Bumer,' 'Brother,' 'Zhmyrki.' And at the same time, it all must remain a cheerful comedy. Margarita flies on a broom to the tune of 'Black Bumer'—fans of the 90s should appreciate it,' note directors Misha Semichev and Roman Kim.
