O.K., before I review this DVD (it’s actually more than one “movie”), let me disclose a couple facts. First, apart from the unparalleled works of Eisenstein, I am not a huge fan of Russian Cinema. I find much of it ponderous, and overly bogged down in State approved propaganda.
Operation “Y” or Operatsiya Y i drugiye priklyucheniya Shurika (Operation Y and other Shurik’s Adventures) as it’s known in Russian, is the most popular Soviet Era comedy, possibly the most popular Russian comedy of all time. So, despite the double negative of Russian Slapstick, I had to give it a look.
It's hard to hate Shurik's adventures, but if you're not a slapstick fan, they're not really going to fully win you over either. Shurik is a young go-getter in the vein of Harold Lloyd’s ‘Glasses Guy’ (Shurik is also bespectacled) and his Adventures fall somewhere between Charlie Chaplin and Benny Hill both chronologically (since it was released in 1965) and stylistically. While the vignettes aren’t as charming as Chaplin, they are, mercifully, less annoying than Hill, and thankfully, the Soviet propaganda while undeniably present is set to a very low pitch. Not being a fan of the genre, I'll refrain from actually endorsing or cautioning about this film collection, but I will say, exhaust the Chaplin, Keaton and Lloyd cannons (and perhaps the cartoons of Chuck Jones too) before moving on to these.
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