Cast overview, first billed only: | |||
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Vakhtang Kikabidze | ... | Mimino (as Buba Kikabidze) |
Mher Mkrtchyan | ... | Rubik (as Frunzik Mkrtchyan) | |
Elena Proklova | ... | Komarova | |
Evgeniy Leonov | ... | Volokhov | |
Kote Daushvili | ... | Grandfather (as Konstantin Daushvili) | |
Ruslan Mikaberidze | ... | Givi Ivanovich | |
Zakro Sakhvadze | ... | Varlaam | |
Marina Dyuzheva | ... | Advocate (as Mariya Dyuzheva) | |
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Rusiko Morcheladze | ... | Lali |
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Archil Gomiashvili | ... | Papashvili |
Aleksey Alekseev | ... | Prosecutor (as A. Alekseev) | |
Vladimir Basov | ... | Sinitsyn (as V.Basov) | |
Valentina Titova | ... | Sinitsyn's Wife (as V. Titova) | |
Borislav Brondukov | ... | Man Weighing Himself before the Flight (as B.Brondukov) | |
Zeinab Botsvadze | ... | Yekaterina Mizandari (as Z. Butsvadze) |
Pilot Mimino works at small local airlines in Georgia, flying helicopters between small villages. He dreams of piloting large international airlines aircrafts, so he goes to Moscow for refresher courses. There in a hotel he meets truck driver Rubik from Armenia who is given a place in that hotel by mistake, and they have a lot of adventures in Moscow. Written by Sergey Ukladov <yook@glasnet.ru>
This is one of the BEST and MOST POPULAR Soviet Comedies ever!
In all former Soviet states this film is still loved and admired, so It's pity that non-Russian speaking audience will never get even 10% of its jokes and humor. There are several reasons for this:
1) To understand this (and actually all soviet film) one must not just know the Russian language - one must know the Soviet system, soviet culture, lifestyle.
2) Those who think that Soviet UNION=Russia are very wrong, and here the fact that USSR consisted of 15 different states (and hundreds of nations actually) has a great importance - as the story concerns the "adventures" of two southerners (a Georgian and an Armenian) in Moscow (that was both capital of Russia and USSR)-great deal of humor comes from their accents, as well as cultural differences. The director himself is Georgian who mostly lives in Russia and most of his films concern Russia (almost all of them are very popular in Russia) Only in one film (Ne Goryui!- that is equally as good as this one though very different) the action takes place in Georgia. (other much recommended films are Kin-Dza-Dza and Autumn Marathon..)
3) It is very important to know certain cultural confrontation that existed in USSR and still exists in Russia - Caucasians (Russia is the only v\country where this term means "black, dark person" - i.e. Georgians, Armenians, Azeri, and others) are rather unpopular in Russia (Russian nationalists consider them second main enemy after Jews, now due to Chechnya war Caucasian people became the most unpopular in Russia ); Characters of Georgian And Armenian visually fit the most standard stereotypes that exist in Russia (- big flat hat, moustaches, etc.) Armenians and Georgians for thousands of years had rivalry and competition, each trying to prove that it is older, better, and more cultural than the other;