813 – Jack Frost (aka Morozko)
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Things I liked in the movie:
Houses with legs.
Spanking as a form of torture.
The ugly step-sister’s treatment of Jack Frost.
Impressions
Very funny! This is a bizarre (to Americans) fairy tale in which elements from nearly all our familiar French and German fairy tales appear: a talking bear, a fairy, a witch, a wicked step-mother abusing a pretty and kind step-daughter, sleeping-beauty situation, three pigs (towing a troika), Grandfather Frost acting as the fairy godmother, dwarves (maybe seven). It wanders all over the place until finally the cute kids get married and the ugly girl gets fat. The riffing is hysterical. It seems like all new story ideas to make fun of. Many of the riffs were based on “Russo-Finnish this” or “Russo-Finnish that.” Highly recommended.
Synopsis
A Cinderella character, Nastenka, is mistreated by her horrible step-mom, who really seems more like a mother-in-law. A strong but lazy wanderer, Ivan, runs into some transient dwarves who rob him. While they’re robbing him, he throws their cudgels so high into the air that they don’t come down. Then he finds a talking mushroom Santa fairy. They play hide-and-seek for a few hours. The mushroom fairy gives him a bow and some arrows. Ivan refuses to bow in thanks so the mushroom fairy threatens to curse him.
Ivan then bumbles into Nastenka and proposes after one minute. To prove his worthiness, Ivan tries to kill a bear. But Nastenka loves animals and saves the bear, which makes Ivan’s head turn into a bear head. That finally drives Ivan to bow to the mushroom fairy in hopes that he’ll turn his head back. Ivan mistakes the fairy to say that he has to do a good deed to get his head back to normal, so he hurries off to perform one. He tries to find someone not afraid of him so he can do the good deed, but he scares everyone off.
Meanwhile Nastenka’s step-mother tries to get her other daughter (Nastenka’s step-sister) a husband. She can’t perform any chores after years of depending on Nastenka, so the prospect boy doesn’t want to marry her. The prospect husband likes Nastenka more, so the step-mother forces her dad to take her to the forest and abandon her.
Ivan finds a house on legs inhabited by a hunchback fairy with huge lower bicuspids. They argue until the fairy gets mad and summons some Ents to subdue Ivan. The trees throw Ivan into the house and the fairy tries to roast his nuts in the oven. He tricks the fairy into going into the oven herself. Then he chases the trees away and tortures the fairy by spanking her until she agrees to help him find Nastenka.
Elsewhere, Grandfather Frost is frosting trees and discovers Nastenka freezing in the forest. She freezes nearly to death before Grandfather Frost takes her on his sleigh to an IHOP, where he lives.
The hunchback fairy gives Ivan a cloak and a pig sleigh that leads him to Nastenka. Later, the fairy has regrets and sends her cat out to kill Nastenka. The cat gets there first and tricks Nastenka into touching Grandfather Frost’s scepter, which kills her.
Ivan finds her too late. He apologizes and that wakes her up. The hunchback fairy gets mad and in her rage pulls a muscle in her back. Ivan and Nastenka get engaged and return home. Nastenka explains everything including her giant dowry. Step-mom gets mad and makes dad drive Marfushka, the ugly step-sister into the forest in hopes that Grandfather Frost will find her a fiancé, too.
Grandfather Frost finds her and she abuses him and demands a fiancé. Hunchback fairy flies to the forest bandits (aka The Seven Dwarves) and hires them to rob the newlyweds and torture them. Ivan fights them off and the clubs he threw up six months ago come down and knock them all out.
Marfushka comes home on a pig-drawn trojka with a dowry of crows. Finally, Ivan and Nastenka get married and it ends with everyone dressing up like the Small World ride at Disneyland and making fun of the fat step-sister.
Host Segments
Prologue: Mike Nelson is Lord of the Dance! Mike and the ‘Bots perform some river dance. Mike glories in his performance to the annoyance of the ‘Bots. Bobo and Brain Guy argue over who Pearl left in charge. She left a long list of Bobo-based maintenance tasks that repel Brain Guy. Brain Guy makes Mike come down and mediate. They have a breakthrough when Brain Guy admits that he has B.O.
Segment two: Crow got an expert to clarify the problems in the movie, Yakov Smirnoff! He visits through the hexfield. He just tells standup jokes. Crow’s questions are esoteric (do you feel the movie speaks to . . . ) and Smirnoff’s answers are weak jokes (in America men shave, in Russia we wish women would shave!).
Segment three: Crow is a bear. He blames that mushroom-head elf guy in a resigned “believe it or don’t” sort of tone. Mike seems suspicious. Bobo and Brain Guy are getting along in an uncomfortable truce. They start complaining about Pearl and start bonding. Crow ate half of Servo and buried him. He was taking his bear simulation to the extreme.
Segment four: Crow hired another Russian expert to help explain the movie. How he’s related to the movie is a very long stretch from Rocky IV to Earl Torgeson a la Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. Torgeson just ignores Crow’s questions as if he’s a film.
Segment five: Tom Servo is trying to be adorable, but he mispronounces it and Mike and Crow mis-repeat everything he says until he goes crazy. Bobo and Brain Guy are drunk and friendly. Pearl comes back and insists the best ape movie ever is Dunston Checks In.
Stinger: Marfushka demanding a fiancé from Grandfather Frost.
Funny Riffs
Mike: So, the first plot point involves knitting socks, I think we’re in for quite a ride, guys!
The girl is praying to the sun to give her more time so she can finish knitting a sock.
Mike: This is the sun, your call is very important to us, but due to unusually high call volume . . .
The sun goes back down.
Tom Servo: Ah, the world’s thrown into chaos, earthquakes, floods, but that’s fine, you knit your sock.
Mike: This is the early version of Snow White, called Snow White and the one normal size person.
The mushroom fairy gives Ivan a bow and arrows. He shoots it and the arrow limply sticks in a tree.
Mike: Wow! It barely works!
There’s a long pause where the camera just looks at some rocks.
Tom: OK, movie, we can wait as long as you can.
The saccharine-sweet Nastenka comes singing sweetly down a hill.
Crow: I think her adorability is crashing in on itself.
The girl just drags buckets of water out of the river and pours them out on the shore.
Crow: You know making her empty the river is just busy work.
Ivan with a bear head walks off waving and yelling “I curse you!”
Tom: Tonight on a very special Grizzly Adams.
Mike as Nastenka: Every time I meet a man, he’s either gay or a bear.
Ivan runs up to a bunch of kids and they scream and run when they see he has a bear head.
Ivan: Tell me, what good deeds can I do for you?
Mike as kids: Well, you could stop crapping on our playground, for one.
Russian kids are running away screaming.
Crow: Chernobyl’s exploding again, let’s go watch!
Ivan sort of looks like Luke Skywalker in Star Wars in his tunic and blonde hair.
Crow as Ivan: Help me, Obi-wan Konoboski
Ivan is chasing a wooden sleigh shaped like a pig.
Crow: Yes, every culture’s mythology features the young hero chasing a pig sleigh.
Crow: So the premise of this movie is that everyone is nuttier than all get-out!
The dwarf robbers are disgusting.
Crow: It’s the seven dwarves: Filthy, Rotting, Lousy, Skanky, Scabby, Sceptic, and . . . Doc.