“Love-Carrot” (2007) is the first significant attempt by Russian cinema to copy and adapt the once popular Hollywood idea of ​​exchanging bodies to the Russian mentality. On the one hand, this is a comedy film about the difficult everyday life of a married couple - Marina (Kristina Orbakaite) and Andrei (Gosha Kutsenko), and on the other - a real X parody of Western paintings. The parody was conveyed to the viewer by four screenwriters, a director, and actors. “Love-carrot” is a plain Russian comedy about the exchange of bodies.
Parody elements
In the storytelling, you can easily find quotes from the famous Mafia sagas (The Godfather, Leon), references to Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Day Watch and Harry Potter. At the same time, the plot contains moments that demonstrate a parody of modern life in general and individuals in particular. For example, the lawyer of Aristarchov, who was personally played by the project director Alexander Strizhenov, instantly provokes certain associations. And the episode in which Andrei (already in Marina’s body) talks about the picture, recalls an excerpt from a work written in 1910 by A. Averchenko, “The Story of a Picture”. All references and parody moments are unobtrusive and funny, thanks to the harmony that perfectly matched actors make up. “Love-carrot” turned out to be an original film, because even the well-known plot used in Hollywood, in Russian realities, acquires unique specificity.
Plot
Life kills the love of the Golubev spouses, passion is gone, it was pushed aside by a career, friends, personal hobbies and everyday routine. They often swear over trifles and spend very little time together. The prospect of a divorce loomed on the horizon. To save the family, the couple goes for a consultation with family psychologist Kogan. As it turned out, the doctor saves family relationships in a very unconventional way. In the morning, Marina and Andrey wake up and find that they have exchanged bodies. As a result, after a crazy series of ridiculous and curious situations, the marriage is saved. The real "happy end", only in Russian gave the viewer the main actors. “Love-carrot” is a wonderful film for family viewing that carries a deep everyday meaning - try to at least a little bit to live the life of your beloved half.
Cast
Acting casting is very important for the customer and the director, if a mistake is made in the selection of actors, this can affect all work in the future. By right, the comedy "Love-Carrot" can be proud of its starring performers. The actors and roles impressed the viewer so much that they became instantly recognizable. Charming and popular Gosha Kutsenko and charming Kristina Orbakaite elegantly complemented each other. Without exaggeration, their creative duet can be called ideal. The whole family of the director Alexander Strizhenov also took part in the film : the wife Ekaterina embodied the image of Korogodsky’s wife on the screen, and the mother Lyubov played the role of a caring grandmother, and her own granddaughter. Alexander’s youngest daughter undoubtedly won the audience’s award in the “Carrot Love: Actors-Children” category, playing the role of a baby appearing in the right place at the right time.
Here's a family-friendly cabal with advertising spray. In addition, Renat Davletyarov, one of the producers of the film, attracted his wife Olga Orlova, who played a close friend of the main character, to work on the project. The other actors played an equally important role. Love Carrot, having an intriguing story, could not lose because of the secondary characters. Most of them moved from Strizhenov’s previous project “From 180 and up”: Evgeny Stychkin, Euclid Kurdzidis, and Ivan Urgant was replaced by his father - Andrei Urgant.
disadvantages
There are many complaints to the scenario, even if you do not take into account the borrowing of the idea itself. Frankly tiresome is the strong imposition of product placement, which comes to direct quotes from commercials. Also a naive little girl with adult morality, a strongly crumpled ending and moralizing at the end of the film. At the beginning of the picture, the image of Marina was somehow foggy, Kutsenko wanted to convey to the viewer a completely different female character, not at all the one that Marina showed at the beginning. Well, the rest of the characters are also not perfect. Nevertheless, they formed the basis of the picture "Love-carrot." Actors and roles were perceived positively by the viewer, which became a logical motivation for the release of the second and third parts. The sequels are clearly inferior to the original picture, but comedies should not burden the viewer in any way.
Generalization
But, despite all these shortcomings, the film looks nice and easy. For the most part, a couple of Orbakaite and Kutsenko contributed to this. Actors of the film "Love-Carrot" did their best. The viewing was so carried away that scenario blunders became invisible.