Director: Viktor Glukhushin, Maksim Volkov
Starring: Lyubov Aksyonova, Prokhor Chekhovskoy, Aleksey Chumakov
Distributor: Rialto Films
Runtime: 97 mins. Reviewed in Jun 2022
Reviewer: Fr Peter Malone msc

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Rating notes: Mild fantasy themes and animated violence.

A princess animation story from Russia about Princess Barbara and her search for a prince, while combatting villainy and journeying with a comic rabbit. A tale for young children.

This is a 21st century Russian animation film which casts more than a glance at popular Disney films. This is especially true of the old classics with princesses, Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, as well as that most popular of 21st-century Disney princesses, Anna, from Frozen.

By and large this is an old-fashioned fairy-tale. The young Princess Barbara is as strong-minded as modern-day princesses are. She loves reading about the fairytale Prince Edward – the prince of her dreams. Her father, the king, worries about her as do the three rather babushka-like minders.

Enter a cocky young man, delivering the post, who is able to manipulate the situation. With a hold over the King, he demands to marry Barbara. What is a princess to do!

This is to go into the forest. Here Barbara meets genial ‘monster’, Bogey and his friend Rabbit, a kind of comic-cousin to Bugs Bunny but more of an outlaw. Actually, Barbara is irritating and dominating, wanting to invoke Mother Nature. Her friends are in two minds about her, even wanting to send her back to her father. However, the villain pursues her and the rest of the film is a chase and adventures.

The era tends to be coach and horses but there is an excursion into the city, cars, shops, drones, a scheming woman and her fawning assistant who, surprisingly, let Barbara go.

Which all builds up, of course, to a confrontation between Bogey and the Napoleonic would-be – but he has quite a number of powers, the touch of the magic, even commanding Mother Nature to do his bidding.

Bogey, of course, is a hero, defends Barbara, but is transformed into an ice figure. Barbara returns with her father, sad. But, what do princesses do, but offer a kiss. And, of course, a Prince Charming emerges from the trapped Bogey (with a surprising number of tattoos on his arm).

Because it is a princess film, there is an appeal to an audience of girls. The boys in the audience may put up with this for a while but identify with both villain and hero.

Hard to gauge what the target audience age is, perhaps a bit frightening at times for some of the littlies, but probably for the under 12s.