MovieChat Forums > Exporting Raymond (2010) Discussion > Disappointed

Disappointed

posted 13 years ago by machtyn
6 replies | jump to latest

Well, I was expecting something ... else. What I got was an episode of a guy who failed. Sure, Voroniny, has done very well in Russia, but after they replaced Kostya. They happened to replace Kostya with a known entity, someone with talent and experience, and Phil Rosenthal does not look at all pleased about it. Yeah, they could have had Milnya, but he wasn't available.

Sadly, I was mostly bored and somewhat frustrated by Exporting Raymond. The film itself, production-wise, was terrific. The content? Not so much.

It seems to me that after the first few days, Phil should have realized he and his Russian team are not communicating on the same level - lost in translation - cultural divide. Yes, most families are the same - couples have disagreements over petty things, in-laws can be annoying, children (love-em to death... sometimes death seems better) get in the way and have comedic moments - these things are universal. However, what makes ELR great is that many Americans can relate to the American stylism in the show. Phil should have spent a week observing families, asking random people about their life experiences... try to get a feel for how Russians handle everyday life.

In the end, the show worked for Russia because Phil got the heck out of there and released his baby.

[–] YepiTsTrue11 12 years ago

You can tell that he wasn't very interested in learning about Russian culture and comedy, he didn't want a Russian style ELR, he just wanted ELR translated into Russian and played by Russian actors.

[–] chouse1020 12 years ago

Agreed... this was a very interesting documentary; but the problem with it was that ELR was just NOT a very funny show.

The humor on that and Home Improvement were really really bad. These were boring shows that people watched when there wasn't anything good on - but even on a good day were just not very funny. The ensemble cast was far funnier than Ray himself.

Instead of taking the basic premise and Russifying it, they clearly tried to just translate the episodes into Russian. Well, comedy doesn't translate very well from some languages to others.

And when it was childish humor (and not in a good way) to start with, how could it be any better after being lost in translation?

Adding on to it, Phil clearly didn't get that they do things drastically different in Russia. A great example was when he started laughing during a live take.

When you're trying to do a show on a small budget, you may (sadly) have to use the recorded audio from the set - whereas for a better budgeted production, you may use ADR for the dialogue so you can get a perfect sounding audio track by recording the actors in a sound booth later on and basically creating the audio track from scratch. Since we have powerful digital editing tools these days, it's much easier to sync up the words to the lips, especially if the actors do a good job of keeping the same pace in the recording booth as they had on set.

But since they don't do that for the Russian version, Phil was ruining takes.

[–] taijiquan12 12 years ago

I also thought it was interesting, and although I never really liked Raymond myself, I was fascinated by this documentary due to the social and cultural divide it displayed, based around a setting.

It's interesting to see posts that come from the Russian standpoint, that perhaps Phil was being too culturally insensitive and controlling of his project and not understanding that it has to adapt to their culture and style.

To his defense, it did seem like the product was better when he was able to give his input, and something must've gone right considering that at the time of its release, the Russian version of Raymond was apparently very popular.

All in all, I think he definitely would've had an easier time in a country with a culture at least somewhat closer to our own and without as much of a language barrier. He might have seemed overbearing at times, but I understand since it was an issue of his creation they were talking about.

"Bulls**t MR.Han Man!!"--Jim Kelly in Enter the Dragon

[–] nutsberryfarm 12 years ago

the whole thing about no laughing while taping was odd.

We're not soldiers and he's not the enemy. He's a pizza man.

[–] mssumner 12 years ago

If you think about it, the differences between American and British humor are pretty large. This is despite a common language (minus slang, etc.) and a comparatively similar culture. Yet this divide is small enough for us to appreciate the humor on both sides. Have you ever watched a "comedy" on Telemundo? This Mexican brand of comedy is separated from us significantly by language and culture and strikes me, at least, as very sophomoric and unsophisticated. The clips of Russian sitcoms we see in "Exporting Raymond" seem very similar to Mexican "comedy" to these American eyes. I don't get it. I wonder what they think of American/British comedy.

[–] Pregnat_asian_woman 9 years ago

Check out Charlie Booker's Screenwipe USA to see just how far apart British and American TV are:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlDDAURDyIw