Customer Reviews

Kingdom of Crooked Mirrors

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The sound and picture on this DVD is great. I was pleasantly surprised. If you are interested in a good family style fantasy video you can not go wrong with this DVD. The subtitles work great if you do not speak Russian.

It's a very nice fairy-tale, mostly interesting for children, but it can be interesting for the adults as well. Has a good teaching point in it, that the evil will never succeed, and that the truth always wins!! Very good quality DVD, I enjoyed watching it with my family!
I used to watch it on TV when I was a child myself, and watching it now again, brought back the memories.
Would recommend also watching "The Tale of the Time Lost" - it teaches the kids to value time instead of wasting it, and be organized. :-)

I don't have this DVD, but I did have the pleasure of viewing this film from Moscow's Gorky Studios several times a few years back, and I can safely say that this is a wonderfully enchanting and imaginative movie. Part action-adventure and part musical, "Kingdom Of The Crooked Mirrors" is a movie that young children will adore...the production value for the time (1963) is remarkably high, almost "Wizard Of Oz" quality. This could a great film for someone like Disney to re-make--I think it would work well in live-action or animated form. The characters are well drawn-out and often very funny, and the plotline is clever and imaginative. One might not normally expect a movie such as this to emerge from the repressive conditions of old Soviet Russia, but here it is, and the children who've seen it are all the better for it. Thank you, Alexandr Rou, for giving us this hidden gem!

The Bottom Line:

Mercifully brief, and full of the type of scenes children might like if they don't have a problem with the subtitles, Kingdom of Crooked Mirrors isn't an especially bad film, but for the majority of its running length it feels mainly like an Alice in Wonderland clone with Communist leanings; the art design and costumes are rich enough, but you're probably better off getting The Thief of Bagdad.

2.5/4