Starik Khottabych is classic Soviet film, which screenplay is based on a bestseller, Lazar Lagin's book. The book was some kind of modern Harry Potter novels for soviet kids.Personally, I've read that book about 10 times when I was a kid.It's about a pioneer (communistic analogue of boyscout) who finds a genie bottle in 1930's.Boy calls the genie "starik Khottabych", it's hard to translate this name, because russian "starik" literally means "old man" in English but starik has another sense, while Khottabych is a usual for russians and ukrainians second name, which means "son of Khottab".Overally the boy thinks of genie as an old baby and tries to learn how to use genie's abilities to help his friends, his favourite soccer team and so on.Pioneer don't bothers about money, his main concern is how to make Khottabych a true communist. This film may be influenced by Comrade Stalin himself, but it doesn't mean nothing today.It's moral is looking naive for modern kids in ex-USSR, they prefer to watch meaningless Pokemon cartoons.Still, if you want to know something about such an unique thing as Soviet Fantasy, this movie is one of the few examples of it.
Review of The Flying Carpet
