Excellent but underrated film

a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

its basic virtue is to translate historical reality in a language useful for many viewers. the price - high liberty about the events. but it is a kind of inspired mixture of legend and fairy tale and a Russian animation is a delight. the music, the dialogs, the magic are the real proofs. but it is little more than a beautiful story. in a correct argument to discover one of the most important Ukrainean heroic figures and that could be the fundamental purpose. than, it remains , for many viewers from East the historical cartoons from childhood. it is cool, nice and fresh and that are details very important for a form of subtle propaganda. so, a fairy tale. and little more. but, behind each verdict, a real delight.

Prince Vladimir has been criticised for taking liberties with history, ideological pandering and being unfair to religion. That personally didn't come across as a problem, Prince Vladimir does take liberties with the truth but does so in an intelligent and entertaining way- like Don Bluth's Anastasia- instead of playing it for laughs and ripping off blatantly(like The Magic Voyage and the Titanic animated movies did). As for the pandering and religion stuff, they come across as somewhat nit-picky in comparison and I'm not going to go down that route as I'm not an expert in this regard. Prince Vladimir came across really well and deserves to be judged on its own. The animation is gorgeous with a lot of detail, beautiful colours and you can tell that a lot of care and effort went into it. The music is both rousing and heartfelt, with a distinctive Russian feel, whether folk-song/tale or patriotic. The dialogue is intelligent and interesting, is not restrained or disturbing, is not too complicated and not too dumbed down either and manages to entertain and teach. The story draws you right in, is constantly interesting and well paced and may give you the incentive to read up on the subject matter afterwards. That is fascinating also though there may be a few whose enjoyment of the film may be tainted after reading what really happened. The characters, while archetypes in a way(especially the villainous pagan priest), are still engaging, in particular the prince of the title is a flawed character who positively matures and changes. The voice acting is dynamic and noble, if sometimes with a theatrical edge that is hardly inappropriate. All in all, intelligent, fascinating and a wonder visually. 10/10 Bethany Cox

It is refreshing to find a movie which does not take children audience for granted. I discovered as an adult by sheer luck this movie and went through it wishing they had completed the second part (which they did not alas). It is set in the Russian equivalent of our pagan Dark Ages just before Aethelbehrt of Kent marrying Bertha of Frankia. And we have invaders, different faiths opposing each other and the opening of Russia to other realms- Here the Byzantine world, as opposed to the Late Roman/early middle age European rewriting of borders. Clearly our hero Vladimir is imperfect and well, he does kill his brother (but Disney got away with murder see Malefice and the evil queen in SnowWhite right?. I think it would be unfair on the movie to expect a politically correct story because well our ancestors were not, and did things our times does not judge right to do. yet rewriting historical facts is wrong and this movie has done the best it could to still bring a story for children, while making history appetising and wholesome for children. The nice pagan priest is rewarded, the evil pagan priest is punished, the prince improves and opens up to the world. there are numerous positive messages. I have read that the movie was unfair to other religions? which is odd because in this movie, we see different forms of paganism and the only Christians are the Byzantines??? plus by the way at one point this man great grand children will marry Harold Goodwinson's daughter while another will become the ancestress to the French royal family! Rather than blame the story, it is a movie where as a parent you can make the dark ages alive and explain so much to your children and I do not speak one word of Russian. Enjoy and if only we had more movies like this delightful one.

This Russian Animation piece which melts history with (lots and lots) of fiction/fantasy is very graceful and quiet fascinating. It may look quiet Disney-like at first, but the storytelling got something quiet beautiful and refreshing for a children movie.The background design and the animation,two things you should take for granted I don't care very much or know very much about usually-took my breath from pleasure in few scenes, and were generally quite delightful .The characters design isn't in this league, but is quite solid .Also as characters, none of the characters were amazingly notable or very original ,but they were mostly likable and interesting enough. Especially likable is Aleksey,the poorest little boy in the history of cinema.Or,ah,will quite make it to the top 200.Some of the romance in the movie seems to be quite forced(to all of you don't like romance,the film got only little bit of this)and illogical,if you can accord to romance with this word.The music seems to be very fitting and pretty-but sadly in the copy of the movie I saw there was no translation of the songs,which seem to add a lot to the movie.I don't remember seeing a children movie which is dealing so much , subtextly and textly and with certain complexion, with politics and religion and does is it a way(or so do I think-I'm not a child and didn't have the opportunity to talk to a kid about the movie)that won't bore them away or would be understandable for them. In kids, see title etc, begin the problems.A dangerous wind of Russian nationalism is blowing from this movie. a kid who would watch this movie would will learn from it that horror can be nothing but heroic and fun while done by Russians-or at least by blonds. While horror done by Asians and so stay,surprisingly,horror. I strongly recommend to all parents out there ,espcially Russian parents, who agree to expose their children to such conceptions, to sit with their children through the film and to state and carefully explain the wrongness that seem to be in the film's pov. Although for such a close -minded-seeming film ,the movie got some interesting moments of religious pluralism.Than again, the villain of this movie is a blood-thirsty pagan priest. So, watch this film if you are an adult who likes animation films for kids, either you like Disney or despise them. Watch it it you would like to see an interesting represation of Russian history mix fiction for the wide public, or just like to watch some pretty and somewhat different animation. And if your kids want to watch it-make sure to watch it with them, if to let them watch it at all.