Dobrinya and the Dragon

The prince's niece is taken and the blame is put on the dragon Zmey Gorinich. Dobrinya Nikitich is a bogatyr; the prince's most trusted warrior, and he is told to bring her back. But Dobrinya knows the dragon; the two are old friends and Zmey would not do such a thing. He sets off. A tax collector attaches himself along the way; the man is after a debt and never stops talking. They find Zmey on the road. The real culprit is someone else and there is a name from the prince's circle behind it. Ilya Maksimov directs. Valeri Solovyev, Yuri Tarasov and Oleg Kulikovich are among the voices. It is a Russian production and animated. The film is part of the Melnitsa studio's bogatyr series, which retells the heroes of the Russian epics as comedy. The narrative deliberately spoils the epic material; the heroes are lazy, the prince is mean and the dragon is likeable. The humour rests on anachronism; the characters speak the language of today. The series reached a wide audience in Russia and became a run of films spread over years. The narrative is aimed at children but carries jokes for adults too. The animation is two dimensional and the design is close to folk illustration. The matter it treats is friendship; the hero is caught between his orders and his friend. Its limit is accessibility; the references rest on Russian epics and the context is missing from outside. Who it is for: viewers who like Russian animation and parodies of epic. Who it is not for: it is local, simple, and the ending easy.