Once again Amazon Prime has come up trumps in delivering a high quality print of a film I'd never even heard of before watching. OPERATION 'Y' & OTHER SHURIK'S ADVENTURES, despite the awkwardness of the title, is a light and breezy comedy anthology from Russia. There are three tales here, all of them featuring Shurik as the main character, and actor Aleksandr Demyanenko is a delight in the role. Shurik is a high energy character, geeky looking, but whose drive and enthusiasm makes for a likable protagonist.The stories are of differing quality and the first is by far the best. This is a long-running battle of wits between rival workers on a building site; the whole episode is constructed around slapstick humour and as a result it's frequently hilarious, with good production values. The inspiration is clearly the kind of physical comedy popular in Hollywood in the 1920s and 1930s and as a result this is a lot of fun.The second story starts off in the same vein with plenty of hilarious book-reading scenes in which the principal characters are joined at the hip. It's light, vibrant, and funny, although less so when the story becomes a traditional love story later on. The third story is about a pretend robbery and is less interesting, although still not bad. I hope Prime open their archives to more Russian fare because this has provided an eye-opening experience for this viewer.

This feature actually consists of three half-hour-long story lines one after another, related only in that they all star the same hapless protagonist. I read somewhere that the director took Charlie Chaplin as a model for his comedy, and the influence shows here, even to the point of the short-subject-length segments -- and especially in the first story. That one is basically a pure slapstick comedy, drawing gags from the situation of the Sharik character (who actually ends up resembling Harold Lloyd in appearance and behavior more than Chaplin) working part time on a construction site, alongside the man who he caused to be working there as a sentence. The second segment is the one I thought to be the greatest success, as it combines the visual humor (many sequences of which, throughout, would work without dialogue at all) with a well-tuned funny situation and good actor chemistry. The third and titular segment is amusing as well, but perhaps get a little too involved in its own story. Overall, it's funny material and recreates well what made the silent comedies of the short-subject era funny, if without the inspiration of an actual Chaplin on set.

This naive old comedy is a landmark of Russian cinema. The humor is mostly Charlie Chaplin style (cake in the face etc.), however many verbal jokes from this comedy have made it into everyday language. There are three novels in this movie: one about a convict doing community service hand by hand with a student with orthogonal morale, another about college students cheating, and the last one about a trio of junks (the famous Russian comedians Nikulin, Vitsin, and Morgunov) staging a burglary to cover the real one.I would like to invite visitors to see pictures from the movie and watch a detailed trailer at RussArt.com. Those who read Russian can find more materials useful: reviews, actor biographies, articles, etc.Pictures: http://russart.com/?moviepictures&mid=69 . Trailer: http://russart.com/?movietrailer&mid=69 .

I love this movie, and the guy who plays Shurik is hilarious. Much funnier than Jim Carey. I want to see more of his movies. Too bad he lived on the wrong side of the curtain for so many years. And sadly, like all the best, he died young. He should have tried to be more like Ted Kennedy. And his side-kicks were hilarious as well. A friend told me that they were famous Russian actors in their own right. Just plane fun, light-hearted and simple. Whether you speak Russian or not, it's worth it to have a look at this classic comedy collection. It is a fascinating look into the Russian sense of humor, as it is universally loved in the former Eastern Bloc countries, and if you look at the ratings for US viewers, here in the West as well.