Gorinych Falls Flat on Its Face

A scene from the movie Gorinych (2025)I went into this film completely blind, without reading any reviews or even looking at the genre. But when I heard the first song, my reaction was, "No way, they've got to get better than this." Unfortunately, they didn't. The "Courier's Song" is probably the best musical composition in the entire movie, but even that's pretty mediocre. I'm a big fan of musicals, but Gorinych (2025) is not a musical, and calling it musical cinema is a stretch. The songs are poorly written, and the music is sloppy, and they barely even affect the plot. What would happen if you took out the "Courier's Song"? Nothing, really. The creators of this film are clearly talented people - I'm being sarcastic. I'll go into more detail about this later, but suffice it to say that watching Gorinych (2025) is a painful experience for adults, and kids will find it completely uninteresting. There are much better movies out there. One thing that really stood out to me was how the film's not bad, but it's not good either. The graphics are a bit jarring and overly noticeable. The costumes and set designs - the ones that aren't just drawings - are too "fantastical." I mean, if you're going to create a ridiculous, nonsensical fantasy world, own it, like in Alice in Wonderland or Cinderella. But here, the creators just throw in random absurdities from the start. They did put some effort into some of the costumes and props, and the makeup is decent, but other parts are just sloppy. It feels like the creators of this film didn't even try. The actors play their characters like they're from a community theater production after New Year's. It's like they're going through the motions - no offense to community theater actors. It's hard to criticize the actors, though, since their characters are one-dimensional and not very engaging. I mean, it's hard to mess up a character like Winnie the Pooh, but even that's not what we get here. As for the director, Dmitry Khonin, or the screenwriter, Alexander Archipov, I'm not really sure who to blame. But as for Alexander Petrov, Victoria Agalakova, and the rest of the cast, I don't think they're to blame for their characters being so uninteresting. The songs in this movie are weak, the lyrics are weak, and they barely even fit into the plot. "The Strongman Bambula Broke Two Chairs" is a serious example of this. They even repeat it a few times. I mean, come on. The rest of the soundtrack isn't any better, and "The Song Without Words" is just a mess. At least that one kind of fits into the plot, but it's not like it's a redeeming quality or anything. Overall, the music in Gorinych (2025) is a total letdown, and since it's a kids' movie, you'd expect a higher level of quality. The plot is completely disconnected. Lechu "Gorinych" (Alexander Petrov) gets sent "to the bottom" with "research goals," where he finds a "magic egg" and then gets transported into a fantasy world. There's a little dragon, some knights without horses, a dumb prince, and a naive princess, and so on. It's like they're just making it up as they go along, and even the creators of the film admit it, but they're just being facetious. This movie has no meaning, no moral, and no educational value. I don't know if modern kids would even enjoy it, but as for me, I didn't like it when I was four or five, and I'm definitely not going to enjoy it now. For adults, Gorinych (2025) is a 90-minute mess, plus some really bad songs. Like I said, don't watch this movie.