Review of the film “One Hundred Years Ahead” based on the works of Bulychev

A fantasy adventure film by Alexander Andryushchenko, “One Hundred Years Ahead,” based on the story of the same name by Kir Bulychev, is being released. The next achievement of the domestic blockbuster production is assessed by Julia Shagelman.

The film, the shooting of which was completed at the end of 2022 (then specialists polished the visual and sound effects), is not a remake of the series “Guest from the Future” (1984), but a new adaptation of Bulychev’s story, in some moments quite far from the original source. This is the main successful decision of the authors: to viewers of several generations who grew up watching Alisa Selezneva, the robot Werther and the myelophone, any attempt to repeat the same thing verbatim forty years later would seem like a blasphemous heresy, and to those who are younger (the picture’s age rating is 6+), the late Soviet surroundings with string bags, kefir bottles and pioneer ties would be simply incomprehensible.

So the modernity of the film is the current year, 2024, although slightly different from the one given to us in sensations. For example, in it the first contact with alien civilizations occurs: Moscow schoolboy Fima Korolev (Kirill Mitrofanov) accidentally intercepts a signal from a space courier (semi-secret cameo by Lev Zulkarnaev), and this prompts earthlings to urgently drop all their affairs and start building a bright future. In this future, Sberbank ATMs and resorts in the Krasnodar Territory will remain, but there will be no wars, epidemics, or other troubles. However, one armed clash will still occur – with space pirates led by the villain Glot (Yura Borisov), but the intergalactic federation, including the Earth, will emerge victorious thanks to the feat of the fearless Kira Selezneva.

All this is stated on screen by Fima’s classmate Kolya Gerasimov (Mark Eidelstein): the filmmakers clearly consider the “show, don’t tell” principle to be unreliable and prefer to support the pictures with text (they will repeat this technique a couple more times to be sure). But these events are yet to happen, and the day before the contact, the unsuspecting Kolya is busy competing with the bully Vitka (Matvey Astrakhantsev) for the heart of the school beauty Altukhina (Sofa Tsibireva). Physicist Margarita Stepanovna (Victoria Isakova) intervenes in the conflict and leaves Kolya after school. In the back room of her office, he finds some strange little thing, takes it in his hands, and is naturally transported a hundred years into the future.

In Moscow in 2124, of all the recognizable signs, only one high-rise building has survived – it seems, Moscow State University. All other city landmarks have disappeared somewhere, perhaps due to the war with pirates, or perhaps another renovation. They also learned to control the climate, do not eat meat and almost never use transport. But the main thing is that there lives a girl Alice with pink hair (Dasha Vereshchagina), a student of the same Kolya school and the daughter of that same heroic Kira, who disappeared without a trace after the battle with Glot. Alice’s dad, Professor Seleznev (Konstantin Khabensky), has long come to terms with this loss, but the girl dreams of finding her mother, and in this she must be helped by Kolya and his little thing – a clot of energy that allows you to jump back and forth in time, which is called a cosmion (no myelophones in this universe).

Of course, the pirates desperately need cosmon – the frostbitten Glot, who wants to turn the space-time continuum in his favor, and Veselchak U (Alexander Petrov), who competes with him for the place of leader. So they are transported back, a hundred years ago, with Kolya and Alisa, and then Fima, Margarita Stepanovna and for some reason even Vitka and Altukhina will join this company. Viewers can expect fights, chases, alternative versions of the past and future, awakening first love, boisterous laughter and nervous tics of Alexander Petrov, and an exceptionally awkward moment with Kolya reading his own rap.

In general, “One Hundred Years Ahead” is reminiscent of the work of neural networks, which, along with Bulychev’s text, were fed everything fashionable and cool that the authors had spotted in world science fiction over the past thirty years. The result can be described by the phrase “(fill in as appropriate) we have at home”: for example, “The Fifth Element”, “Guardians of the Galaxy”, obvious and veiled references to other films of the Marvel universe, a robot voiced by the gentle voice of Fyodor Bondarchuk, reminiscent of WALL-E’s girlfriend at the same time and the droid BB-8 from the new “Star Wars”, a villain similar to Feyd-Rautha from the second “Dune” – the latter, of course, happened by accident: the films were filmed almost simultaneously. It all looks glossy, looks cheerful in places (although the film’s running time of 142 minutes is too long, and out of five endings it would be possible to leave, say, two), but it really smacks of plastic.