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Very well executed

I'll tell you why so serious

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

I am going to agree with one of the users here who wrote earlier:"In regards to the portrayal of pre-revolutionary Russia, and the ideas expressed in the movie, it is utterly silly, fake and pretentious. In fact, it is fake and pretentious to the point of being ridiculous."Couldn't have said it better myself! Pretentious and vain would be the right adjectives to describe Mikhalkov and his work in the past couple of decades. Yes, this piece is simply like an illustration from a coloured book for foreigners: vodka, bears, mysterious Russian soul etc. Simply appalling. And the worst thing is, it was all(still is!) being presented as a "serious piece of art". Menshikov as a cadet at 38 made me cringe throughout the whole movie. And I've never thought of him other than a comedian. He does great in those but his serious roles suck. Just my 2 cents.

The thing that I REALLY like about this film is the story and the poetic way in which it wants to develop. But I can't get past the bad thing, which is that it fails at making it convincing.. and both the comedy and the drama are extremely cheesy.I'm Russian and I don't like Mihalkov because of his vanity, it all seems like some sort of local thing between him and himself. For example, in this movie, there are several scenes that have nothing to do with the story and do not serve for comedic purpose (because were not in the least funny), and could have easily been left out. It is obvious he for some reason liked them and felt it was right to put them in the final cut. The comedy is BAD. The way comedy develops in a Mihalkov film, is usually by trying to have this sort of crazy mess at the beginning, lot of characters, goofy scenes that don't really have much to do with the main plot, etc. This has worked amazingly cool in many films because the trick is when it's done in an uninterested matter. But this film fails miserably at it, because it all seems SO extremely obvious and forced. The scenes last so long they become a desperate attempt at basically forcing you to laugh and have a good time. In the tragic aspect the film fails as well, not because of the story itself, but because it basically comes from nothing. Mostly because the 2 main characters, apart from having no chemistry between them, are both quite unlikable. I could not see anything appealing about Jane, she seemed totally ordinary and there was nothing beautiful or mysterious in her for which some young guy would fall. The scene where she meets Radlov is painful to watch, the script in that scene is idiotic. Andrei was simply too stupid. I love Menshikov but I kept feeling bad for him in this film, him playing a cadet at 38 it's ridiculous, all he did was constantly acting like a guy with some mental issues in order to appear younger. And his character becoming a mad man for Jane and feeling the most brutal adoration towards her makes no sense, not because he doesn't know her but because she isn't in the least interesting, and later she randomly jumps in his bed, right after telling him she was no good for him, managing to become even less interesting, plus skanky. On top of that, they both mess up with a character that was clearly there to make this sort of "villan" for the story. But actually, the Radlov character never did any harm to anyone and had no intentions of it, through the movie, Jane continued to make an idiot of him in order to use him for her business purposes, and Andrei egoistically puts him in an awkward position when he goes to propose to Jane. Then, Andrei publicly hits him with a stick and of course that ends badly for Andrei and Jane. Well, what did they expect?Bottomline, bad film, although it does have a romantic story even if it's not convincing.

This movie is a good work for export sale. Collection of some widespread (among foreigners) myths about Russia: the way Russians drink vodka, the way they "have rest", "bears in the street" and so on. In addition the movie has some slip-ups like Soviet lampposts near Kremlin, stars over Kremlin towers, 50 stars on American flag of early 20th century et al. On the other hand, perhaps, Mikhalkov tried to show Russians' good sides for the foreigners who only know those myths and he did it the way they could understand. Girls cried for the love story, they loved the movie. Funny thing: the movie was produced by Mikhalkov himself, but "supported" by State Committee of Cinema, then the movie was shown on TV – hey, tax-payers! ;). Wow, "The Barber" became the really profitable commercial project. So, summary. You can watch this movie one time or another but remember: you will see authentic scenes, dresses and surroundings as well as the usual "Russian myths" made for export, quite beautiful picture and quite predictable love story.

I've seen movies from all over the world, a lot of them was American of course, but several of them came from Europe and Asia. But I can't remember ever having seen a Russian movie before. This was the first one and I must admit that it was quite surprising, although it wasn't an undivided success in my opinion.The movie tells the story of Douglas McCraken, a foreign businessman and inventor who wants to sell a new and experimental steam-driven timber harvester in Siberia in 1885. But not everything goes exactly as planned. To make sure that his machine is accepted by the Russian government, he'll need the help of his lovely assistant Jane Callahan. While she is on her way, she meets a young cadet and falls in love with him. But the lovely Jane has more admirers and after an incident, the love of her life is exiled to Siberia...Not everything worked, but overall I must say that this was a quite enjoyable movie. The main problem that I had was that it sometimes didn't seem to take everything very serious. The mix of drama and slapstick didn't really work very well and even annoyed me from time to time. Nevertheless, I must admit that there was some nice humor in it as well. For instance the sequence with the American drill sergeant who proves that he doesn't know anything about classical music, but who's too proud to admit that, is excellent. But still I think it would have been much better if there was less humor and more realistic drama in it. Overall I would say that the acting in the movie was good, although I wished to see Richard Harris in a bigger role. Now it just felt like he was in the movie because of his name, not because of his talent. I would like to end this review by saying that this is an enjoyable movie, even though it sometimes didn't feel right. I give it a 6.5/10. Perhaps even a 7/10, but certainly nothing more than that.