I have to admit I have a soft spot for spoofs, slapstick comedies like Airplane or Hot shots. I never knew any non-American movie like these existed and the Soviet Union would be on the bottom of my list of countries that would produce one.

And here we are. My expectations of propaganda, political message and social morals were unfounded: it's a light Russian-speaking comedy (the Italians in the movie speak Russian) with Italian and Soviet stereotypes from mafioso to secret police officer with a lot of explosions, car chases, damage to historical sites, nice shots of iconic sites in Russia, a lot of laugh while the highlight being the female protagonist visibly enjoying the movie at least as much as the viewers...

Good fun for the whole family and nostalgic to those who grew up in Eastern bloc countries.

It is not my favorite Ryasanov's movie, but nevertheless I recommend it for everybody who like comedies about treasure hunting. The plot is quite usual. Somewhere in very poor Italian hospital dies old Russian lady, who appears to be one of noble Russian aristocrats. She left Russia after revolution 1917, but she was not able to take with her all her treasures. So in the hospital, before she dies, she reveals to everybody, who is near her (her granddaughter, gangster, doctor, paramedics, patients) her secret. And treasure hunt begins! The movie is quite funny, but not the best example of Russian comedies. The good news is that unlike many Russian comedies which are fun only for native speakers, this one can be comprehended by any audience.

This was an Italian-Soviet co-production, which should have made for an interesting production process. It also appears as if both countries must have thrown huge portions of their budgets in, as the film looks incredibly expensive.

Which is part of the issue with it. The plot concept (a bunch of Italians here that there is some buried treasure in Russia; they go there to look for it and are followed by an undercover cop -- that's it) is extremely simple and basically serves as a frame on which to hang some huge, outlandish, and probably extremely expensive set-pieces, such as an airliner driving along the highway, cars jumping over each other, filling stations blowing up, lions roaming the streets of Leningrad, and more.

These are all fun and diverting to watch, but as one movie they don't completely hang together. And they push out of they way much of what would have been there in terms of a plot or well-defined characters. I've seen two other Eldar Ryazanov films and in these regards this is nothing like them -- I suspect maybe the huge amounts of time and money that must have been poured into this movie limited him.

In a sense it's of a kind with other big-scale chase/heist movies of the 60s and 70s (and their renaissance with films like Rat Race),but it's not the best of all of them and remains fun basically on the one level.

Antonia Santilli is a delight to watch, though, not least because she seems completely amused by everything that happens the whole time. And Andrey Mironov is extremely talented, even if the fast pace doesn't give him as many opportunities as it could to display that.

In all, a fun movie that's very impressive for its big-scale stunt scenes and is never boring, but not much beyond that.