‘Why did you hurt this Boyar woman, you lowly man?’
A young research scientist experimenting with a time machine opens a doorway to Imperial Russia 400 years into the past. A minor official and a petty criminal accidentally switch places with Tsar Ivan the Terrible and, when the machine goes wrong, it looks like the trio are marooned in their new time periods.
An opening caption sets the tone for this Russian comedy by informing us that the film is both ‘Not Quite Realistic’ and ‘Not Historically Accurate.’ As if we needed to be told. From the off, we’re in the company of nerdy egghead Aleksandr Demyanenko, whose experiments in the 4th dimension are leading to power cuts in his building and incurring the wrath of minor official Yuriy Yakovlev and his wife Natalya Krachkovskaya. Burglar Leonid Kuravlyov is busy working in the flat next door during one of their arguments and, when the machine starts working, he and Yakovlev find themselves part of history while the ‘Tsar of All Russias’ (Yakovlev, again) winds up in modern day Moscow.
It’s fair to say that humour doesn’t always cross national boundaries and the ‘madcap’ and ‘wacky’ antics on display here are a case in point. The opening sequence features Demyanenko alone in his flat, hoovering up his cigarettes and shoelaces by mistake while the cat goes for a swim in the fishtank. Some of the footage is speeded up for comic effect and, unfortunately, this technique is repeated ad nauseam throughout the rest of the film. Demyanenko also needs to cope with feckless wife Natalya Seleznyova, who is intending to leave him for film director Mikhail Pugovkin, a fact which doesn’t impress the newly-arrived Imperial Leader. Unfortunately, Tsar Ivan doesn’t get to do a lot else apart from bully various people and earn the attention of representatives from the local funny farm.
Similarly, back in simpler times, Yakovlev and Kuravlyov never leave the throne room, the humour of their situation revolving around the slow-witted lookalike trying to impersonate the Tsar and the thief’s attempts at making a quick buck on the side. Pretty much all we get are lots of soldiers running about when speeded up and a pie fight. To its credit, the film never pretends to be anything but a silly farce, with character talking direct to camera and plenty of energy directed into the various pratfalls. Obviously, any humour inherent in cultural references will pass over the head of a Western audience, but the physical humour is the kind that was old a good twenty years earlier and, more appropriately, belongs to film’s silent era.
Russia’s Greatest Love Machine was having an off day…
There are plenty of comedic opportunities in the setup, which vaguely resembles ‘Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure’ (1989), but the double culture clash is never really explored, pretty much because the action almost never leaves Demyanenko’s flat or the imperial throne room. This is more understandable when you realise that this is an apparently fairly faithful adaptation of a 1935 stage play by Mikhail Bulgakov. However, a little effort to open out the action would probably have been a good idea.
The film was a big domestic hit, with over 60 million tickets sold, and, rather surprisingly, managed an international release in Europe, Scandinavia and the U.S. It’s also been sold stateside with the ‘Back to The Future’ suffix, although I suspect this might only have occurred after the success of the cinematic exploits of a certain Marty McFly.
A badly dated comedy, which might raise a few laughs amongst those who understand all the cultural references.
Mark David Welsh 