Why you shouldn't watch “Koschey. The Beginning "- a colorful cartoon that causes a migraine

On October 28, the full-length cartoon “Koschey. Beginning "from the Parovoz studio. Speech in it, as the name implies, is about the formation of a famous hero of Russian fairy tales. Initially, the release of the picture was planned for large screens, but due to the lockdown, the creators' plans changed.

"Koschey. The Beginning "is conceived as a part of the universe of the animated series" Fairy Patrol ", which tells about the adventures of young sorceresses who wield the powers of the four elements - here fans of the "Winx Club" should have a little strain. And it looks like a studio blunder - after all, many will watch the cartoon without knowing its origins.

But even if you know who Alyonka, Varya, Masha and Snezhka are, you, like the author of this text, will not get any easier. After all, the filmmakers have saved up a lot of ways to torment the viewer.

Nausea vivid visual and musical hodgepodge

A brave warrior named Koschey lives in an abstract fairy-tale principality. He is obsessed with the idea of ​​revenge on White

ghost - an evil creature that killed his family. But for this he first needs to get a special artifact - the Key of Oblivion. The trail leads the hero to the dryad Mei and her younger brother Bao, and together they embark on an adventurous journey in search of the relic.

It's funny that the plot of the cartoon fits into several sentences, although the density of events is off scale. But here's the paradox: at the same time, the feeling that nothing really happens on the screen does not disappear.

This is because the main conflict could be solved in 20 minutes. But the creators had to somehow stretch the timing, so they filled the remaining time with meaningless details that had nothing to do with history.

If you watch "Koschei" for more than 20 minutes, you can get a migraine attack from the sickening abundance of bright colors and colorful locations quickly replacing each other. At best, the viewer will feel like a baby, in front of which a rattle is constantly shaking. In general, if the authors set out to create the most annoying visual in the world, they did it very well.

But the matter is not limited to this: the creators decided to influence to the maximum not only the eyes, but also the ears of the audience. In this musical mess, literally everything is mixed. Want Celtic ringtones? Please. Asian motives? It will not do without them.

Even a very strange musical number in the spirit of Bollywood films was inserted into the cartoon - although, who knows, suddenly it was thought of as a subtle reference to “Scott Pilgrim». The Harry Potter films, Looney Tunes are not all the associations that come to your mind when you try to listen to the musical sequence.

Cliche on cliche and shameless borrowing

At the same time, "Koschey. Beginning ”will, in a sense, please those who like to notice details. For example, you can count every time another cliché appears on the screen. Let's say the heroes try kissbut they are interrupted all the time. Or someone who was a villain turned out to be good, but a seemingly positive character, on the contrary, revealed himself as a bad guy.

Or you can be like Leonardo DiCaprio's character, Rick Dalton, and cheerfully point at the screen when you see an element there, borrowed from another film. The captive character is chained exactly like Tai Lung from "Kung Fu Pandas». At some point, a ridiculous scene will begin with the participation of fish - copies of the characters of the "Underwater Lads". And in the background, the lost relative of the Rabbit from Disney's Winnie the Pooh flashes once.

Although the biggest borrowing of the tape, of course, is Koschei himself - a mix of Geralt from Rivia and Flynn Ryder, if all the charm were pumped out of the latter. The film is completed by the four heroines of the Fairy Tale Patrol, a plagiarized cartoon from the Winx Club.

Same Face Syndrome and Wooden Animation

The film desperately mimics the work of Disney: this can be seen both in the vocal inserts and in the way the artists diligently copy the style of drawing people. In fact, in Disney pictures, heroes, especially women, are often portrayed in a rather typical way: too childish facial features, a small snub nose and giant eyes.

It is for this, by the way, that both parts of Frozen were criticized, where the main characters - Anna and her sister Elsa - looked almost identical, only their hairstyles and clothes were different.

Sometimes it gets ridiculous, as in the case of one of the recent Disney works - "Paradise and the Last Dragon." Then they joked on the Web that even the dragon Shisu had Elsa's face painted. Although gradually the studio seems to realize something: for example, in the upcoming "Encanto" the focus will be on a girl with a slightly more unusual appearance than we are used to.

Meanwhile, Parovoz studio continues to paint the same pretty faces for its characters. And that's half the trouble: their facial expressions, to put it mildly, are not expressive. By the way, the Disney characters, who were so clearly inspired by the creators, albeit similar to each other, but look completely alive: they expressively laugh, cry, fool around and get angry.

Here you involuntarily move your thoughts back nine years, when the Pixar cartoon "Brave" came out on the screens. Then a whole team of animators worked on the physics of hair movement. princess Merida. To make the curls look exactly like real ones, the artists have developed several options for curls.

Needless to say, the result was excellent. In "Koschei" Mei's hair and cloak live their own life, separate from the hostess. And very sedentary.

Nothing Russian in the tale of Koschey

At one time the Russian blogger Ruslan Usachev scolded "Three heroes on the distant shores" for the fact that a mirror hangs in one of the scenes in a hut in Ancient Russia. So, in comparison with "Koschey" this is just a nonsense nagging.

After all, neither in the characters themselves, nor in what surrounds them, there is not a single drop of authenticity at all. Yes, nominally there is Koschey, the water, the sword-kladenets, Baba-Yaga and other characters of Slavic mythology. Only there is absolutely nothing in their images. Russian.

Nothing in the appearance of the hero betrays in him the familiar Koshchei from the tales - even if he is young. He's just a cute, spineless pig that you can substitute any name for. They may call him Koschey, or they may call him Eugene Fitzerbert or Robin Hood.

And this is most annoying and sad at the same time. The magical "Secret of Coco" plunged the viewer into the Mexican extravaganza, choosing the main theme of an exotic holiday for European culture - the Day of the Dead.

V "Brave at heart»The authors painstakingly recreated the atmosphere of ancient Scotland. And for the sake of just one dress, they first made a real sample of matter, and then exactly duplicated it on the computer. But behind these cartoons are mainly people for whom these cultures are not even native.

In our case, having the richest Slavic mythology, we get "Koschei", in which the main character moves on a motorcycle without the slightest reason - this is not "Forward" from Pixar, where every modern detail of the fabulous setting is justified and has meaning. And Baba Yaga in this cartoon is a pirate - of course, just like that, there is no point in it.

Criticizing animation, one often hears: why find fault with a cartoon whose target audience is children 4–12 years old. Yes, most likely, very young viewers will even like this cartoon: they will be mesmerized by the sugary visuals and annoying music.

But if you are a responsible parent who cares about what the child is watching, you should know: there is no difference at all if you go to the cinema for Koschey. Getting Started, ”or give your kid a YouTube enabled with tons of bright, sticky, and sometimes harmful content.