I was reading some of the user comments and people (mostly from Eastern Europe) were wondering why we a lot of us gave this movie a bad rating. It is because it was featured on a television show that makes fun of old movies, and a lot of the movies that were appeared on this show, are given low reviews. I just thought I'd let you know!
shareI see what you mean. I liked it actually, It is a charming and colorful movie. I understand it is usually on TV in Eastern European countries around the holidays.
Craig R
what is the name of that show?
shareThis is a very charming film. I love all of Alexander Row's films and some of the scenes in them are very beautiful. The name of the show that makes fun of the old movies is Mystery Science Theatre.
shareI'm from Western Europe and now watching it without the MST3K-treatment (sometimes I want to watch a movie before the MST3K-version) and can understand that some people would like this movie. Indeed, it's just a nice charming little tale for young people, especially if you grew up in the sixties.
On the other hand it is perfect material to mock at it. The voices in the original version are irritating (I suppose those high voices would also be present in the dubbed version) and the characters are just plain weird, their actions too. When the feather was flying, leading Ivan to Nastenka, the movie Forrest Gump came into my mind. It's quite funny to read in another thread that MST3K used a Forrest Gump-related riff at that moment :'>.
--Edit: Okay, I've watched it completely now and give it a 5. This sillyness is very enjoyable.
I got the original non-MSTed version on DVD from Ruscico! And you're right...if you think Nastenka has a helium voice in the *dub*, wait till you hear her original Russian voice!
Still...as I said in my user comment for this movie, this is one of the better MSTed movies. Even the guys at Best Brains admit that the Russo-Finnish fairy tale films they do are beautifully produced and filmed and that they have a good deal of affection for them.
Somehow, this movie seemed oddly familiar to me when I saw it on MST3K. I have a soft spot for the kind of cheesy old kids' movie they would show on UHF channels on rainy Saturday and Sunday afternoons in pre-cable days. Maybe this was one of them?
Agreed. First impressions tend to stick with us and since most of the viewers of this film saw it on MST3000 initially, we'll always have that to remember it by. I still watch it and love both the original film and the MST3000 version.
It's a good movie.
MST3000 does a great job at improving the lines.
I give this fairytale a 9/10.
Okay, maybe it's a nice little fairy tale, but I have several problems with it. One - I hated the main characters. The girl was a twit who prevented her father from gaining any emotional growth and let everybody push her around; and her boyfriend Ivan was a egotistical jerk who was just plain annoying. And the part where he gets the better of Baba Yaga! Geez, you have got to be kidding me! This is a powerful Sorceress who lined her driveway with human skulls, and they turned her into a joke so that Ivan could best her easily. It was irritating, just like everything else about him. Jack Frost had Alzheimer's, clearly, and the dad was a total puss who even I wanted to stomp on. The only person I liked was the 'evil' stepsister Mafushka, who I wanted to see do some SERIOUS ass whuppin' on everyone else.
Two - I know fairy tales are beloved and all, but many of them are very corny or puzzling. Or just plain horribly violent, if you look at the ones circa the Brothers Grimm. People actually told these stories to their kids? Child abuse, that's what it was. Be good or the monster will steal you away and eat you in their soup. Makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck. Jack Frost had more than a touch of that, and the way that Mafushka was humiliated when it wasn't even her fault(she'd been horribly spoiled by her mother, who was the one who really deserved all the blame) was just nasty. Yeah, kids, let's all be passive stooges like that little idiot Nastia, and we'll all get exactly what we deserve. Sure, that's a truthful life lesson. Don't think I'm picking only on this film, though - I hate other more Western fairy tales that taught girls the same thing, like Cinderella. She was a total dope too, who didn't deserve anything she got because she had no spine. Most of the movie was tolerable, and it was shot in some very pretty locations - but I just couldn't get around the characters and how much I disliked them.
I happen to agree with you. The worst part of the movie was the archetypal (aka cliche) characters. Anything else that was bad about it (e.g. the use of so much reverse filming: had the director learned a new trick and needed to show it off in completely ridiculous moments? [the cat walking backwards down the stairs and Jack Frost and the dog walking backwards out of the room]) could be chocked up to the silliness of the fairy tale genre, bad dubbing, and cultural misunderstandings. But the characters are simply tired old stereotypes that do nothing but scare children and bring nothing new to the story. Weak, defenseless princess types, the mean people are all overweight and/or unattractive, and the strong, white young man who saves the day!! Boring, sexist, and unoriginal.
BTW, MST3K also riffed on good movies. So, the fact that they did this movie says nothing about the actually quality of the film.
scothadan: "...the way that Mafushka was humiliated when it wasn't even her fault(she'd been horribly spoiled by her mother, who was the one who really deserved all the blame) was just nasty. Yeah, kids, let's all be passive stooges like that little idiot Nastia, and we'll all get exactly what we deserve."
Well, in a culture (early 21st century USA) that largely sees the kind of behavior Marfusha laid on Old Man Winter as "empowered," I can see how one might think so.
Fairy tales were written by people a lot closer to the baseline business of survival than most Americans can even dream of being (although, methinks we might be about to learn). In such cultures, where poverty is the norm and people had damn well better pull together, rudeness is inexcusable. Ivan got his ass kicked for it. Marfusha got sent home on a three-pig sleigh for it (she got off easy). Nastenka never exhibited it. She wasn't passive -- she initially dismisses Ivan as too arrogant; she makes a choice and protects her father by stepping off his sleigh -- but she's anything but a troublemaker.
Fairy tales do not tell us what we are; they tell us what we'd like to be. You, Scothadan, and Cperson don't like them. Many contemporary Americans don't. Our folklore is so far removed from the self-centered arrogance we in the West have come to see as a virtue, it almost seems upside-down.
However, if the total economic collapse I suspect is coming does come to pass, a lot of folks will be learning the value in the core messages of fairy tales very quickly. Your success in such a world largely depends on how nice you are. Children do get abandoned, the shrewish stepmother ruined her own daughter, and cats who refuse to be herded can go live in the woods.
A final word about "victims" like Nastenka: I've known a few. I even married one, and here is the uncomfortable truth about abused children: they usually grow up to be abusive.
Nastenkas are rare, and the creators of such stories knew that. They could see the pattern, even if they didn't have a lot of bullshît psychological terms (and excuses) for it. I believe there's a message about transcendence in there somewhere.
* * *I thought Morozko was a beautiful little film, and I also enjoyed the MST3K treatment. I've seen some people talk about how they brutalized the film, but I didn't see that at all. They seemed to be laughing with it, not at it. Their jokes were seldom mean.
My personal favorite was when Nastenka glances at Ivan as her stepsister throws a hissy-fit: "Uh, let's stay in a hotel."
Marfushka DID get off easy in this film. I've read the original Russian fairy tale "Father Frost" or "Grandfather Frost"--there's no Baba Yaga or any of the other embellishments in this story; it deals only with the "leaving in the woods" part of the tale.
And in the original tale, Father Frost--a more sinister figure than the jolly Father Christmas-type here--ended up freezing the mean stepsister to death in his icy grip as punishment for her behavior!
I don't know, if people are not able to separate the movie from the MST3K treatment how serious can we take their ratings. I think most people gave this movie a low rating because they thought it sucked. I actually thought it was one of the best films ever to get the MST3K treatment.
I think you are giving MST3K too much credit in the movie ratings. In general they do riffs on bad movies, movies aren't bad because they do their riffs.
I'm not hard on this film. I'm just hard on Nastenka! Very hard!
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