Review of the film “The Town Musicians of Bremen” by Alexei Nuzhny

Starting January 1, Russian film distribution will see a competition between two releases from the distributor Central Partnership, which became the absolute market leader by the end of 2023 and, apparently, does not intend to give up these positions. At the same time, “Slave 2” by Klim Shipenko will be released, a continuation of the 2019 hit about reforming modern majors using harsh old-fashioned methods, and “The Town Musicians of Bremen” by Alexei Nazhny, a reboot of the favorite Soviet cartoon with singing animals, which this time are played by live actors. Which of them will receive more people’s love will be shown during the New Year holidays. For now Yulia Shagelman I failed to develop tender feelings for the new incarnation of Troubadour and company.

For the first time, the upcoming rethinking of the Soviet animated duology (“The Bremen Town Musicians”, 1969 and “In the Footsteps of the Bremen Town Musicians”, 1973) became known in the summer of 2022, when Nikita Mikhalkov’s Trite studio, together with Soyuzmultfilm, presented its new project at the Cinema Fund ” Alexey Nuzhny, known mainly for comedies (“I’m Losing Weight”, 2018, “Speakerphone”, 2018, “Feedback”, 2020) and the disaster film “Fire” (2020), was announced as the director at the time. Already this year, the future film successfully fit into the new course of domestic cinema towards family and fairy-tale cinema, set by “Cheburashka” (2023), which was distributed by the same “Central Partnership”, so it also received support from the Ministry of Culture.

Filming of the film, which received a much more impressive running time compared to the animated originals (an hour and 56 minutes), took place in the summer of this year at an accelerated time – just a month – in Dagestan, Chechnya, Ingushetia and the Kabardino-Balkarian Republic. Because of this, the conditional Bremen, the medieval German origin of which the authors apparently forgot, is surrounded by truly beautiful, but somehow inorganic mountains, valleys and forests for this story. It becomes completely strange when the heroes arrive at a music festival somewhere on the beach approximately in the middle (either Kazantip, or Coachella), and in the finale they leave singing towards an erupting volcano (I would like to believe that it is still drawn on a computer ). However, the original also treated the letter and spirit of the Brothers Grimm fairy tale quite freely, so this is not the main problem of the new version.

First of all, they are in the overtones of cruel cynicism and the strained fun that covers them, which are completely uncharacteristic of classic cartoons. The film starts from Troubadour’s childhood. As a little boy (Miron Provorov), he lives with his mother (Yulia Peresild) in a hut in the mountains. From there she goes every day to Bremen to sell tulips, and Troubadour sings songs to these tulips so that they grow better. In order to immediately hook the nostalgic viewer, the first thing heard here is “Ray of the Golden Sun”, only in such a performance and processing that produces rather the opposite effect (Maxim Fadeev and the author of the original songs Gennady Gladkov worked on the music in the film – this became his last project before his death in October of this year).

Before the film has time to start, Troubadour’s mother, having once again gone to the city, falls through the ice of a frozen river, and the house burns down in a fire. The unfortunate boy also goes to Bremen to make money there with music, and then it turns out that his songs completely hypnotize everyone who hears them. This is immediately taken advantage of by the Atamansha (Maria Aronova), the commander of a gang of little street thieves: she forces the Troubadour to sing while her charges pick out pockets and counters. The chieftain is identified by the brilliant Detective (Konstantin Khabensky), but he catches and throws into prison not her, but the Troubadour, while the rest manage to escape unpunished.

Our hero emerges from prison as an adult, muscular man (Tikhon Zhiznevsky), obsessed with a thirst for revenge. However, instead of the Atamansha and her gang, he finds four talking and singing animals: Donkey (Dmitry Dyuzhev), Dog (Roman Kurtsyn), Cat (Irina Gorbacheva) and Rooster (Askar Nigamedzyanov). Users of social networks have already been impressed by the appearance of these creatures on posters, but in motion, thanks to the combination of prosthetic makeup, computer graphics, shabby fur and feathers, human eyes looking out from all this and strange voices, they look and sound completely unnatural and even somewhat ominous.

At the same time, which is typical, these are not at all the friendly and freedom-loving tramps that older viewers remember. They constantly bicker among themselves, and their main desire is to find a master, whose surrogate the Troubadour becomes. Well, then everything is (almost) according to the classics: the Princess (Valentina Lyapina) who escaped from the palace, her overprotective dad (Sergei Burunov), the machinations of the brilliant Detective, the return of the Atamansha and a wild mixture of old favorite songs (sometimes enriched, for example, with rap) with new ones, remembering and singing which is absolutely impossible (for some reason, only the line “Even falling from a mountain, you touch love,” whatever it means, sticks in my memory).

In the meantime, the robbers carry out a coup d’état in Bremen, replacing the King with the Chieftain, but the law-abiding Troubadour and his friends quickly restore the status quo. Here, however, it turns out that it is not good to offend the Atamansha, so she has to be legitimized by washing her and marrying her to the King, and the reformed robbers have to be resettled among civilians. After all, the main thing in Bremen is stability.