Let's be realistic.

Great Film overall

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.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

I confess I haven't seen this flick but it got a Gold Turkey Award from the National Lampoon's terrific book of the same name, calling this movie one of the worst ever made. S.J.Perelman once dismissed a silent version of The Admirable Crichton with the phrase, "I won't bother with the plot, which was paltry, or the acting, which was aboriginal" and the Lampoon was pretty similar. They quoted Cicely Tyson as complaining that Russian cinematographer didn't know how to light black actors, so her face simply disappeared into the shadows. They concluded that Maeterlinck's famous tale was unfilmable and that all the movie versions were awful. I look forward to seeing this gobbler someday.

I don't agree with the author of the previous comment about this film. The film has to be understood in the context of the time when it was made-at the height of the Cold War. It is one of very few examples of the US-USSR cooperation, especially, in the movie industry. I was very young when I saw it for the first time, on Soviet TV. Right after the signing of the nuclear arms reduction treaty between the US and the then-Soviet Union. The soundtrack of the movie is beautiful; and some of the best Soviet movie actors are cast in it, to say nothing about Elizabeth Taylor and Jane Fonda. Yes, it's not the Lord of the Rings, by all stretch of imagination. It's rather a children's story, a fairy tale, without computer animation and Oscars for it, but with some good old-fashioned ACTING. By the way, I'd love to purchase the movie and would appreciate any hints regarding to who carries it on DVD.

This musical version of "The Blue Bird" is highly reminiscent of those awful, English-dubbed "Pippi Longstocking" movies from Sweden, where everyone is manic, grinning, out of step and out of tune. The same clueless qualities are on display here, only this picture was directed by George "My Fair Lady" Cukor and co-stars Elizabeth Taylor, Ava Gardner, Cicely Tyson and Jane Fonda! Filmed in Russia (with the assistance of a Russian crew and Russian rubles), it's a remake of the Shirley Temple chestnut from 1940, adapted from the play by Maurice Maeterlinck, and literally defies explanation. Amateurish--and yet fascinatingly so--the movie is heavier than bricks and is never seamless; it feels patched together by a child's hands. I remember watching this on HBO many years ago several times, always in stunned, mind-numbing shock. Taylor (in four roles!) goofs around a little and she's fun to watch, Fonda has a pithy few seconds as Night, and Robert Morley is energetic without camping it up as Father Time; everyone else is out to sea. Forgettable, needless songs by Irwin Kostal and Andrei Petrov. Connoisseurs of bad cinema should feast on this for ages. Hey, terrible flicks can be fun, too. ** from ****

The first co-production between USSR and Hollywood would have to be this strange kiddie film that is so icky sweet, it makes "Barney" look like "Penthouse Forum" in comparison! Some kids meet up with their fairy Godmother (Elizabeth Taylor dressed like a Mafia wife gone insane). With a wave of her magic wand, household pets, and inanimate objects come to life. The most disgusting has to be what happens to a pitcher of milk! It turns into a ballerina. To remind audiences of its milk origins, whenever the ballerina dances, we hear milk splash in a pitcher. It sounds as if the poor ballerina has a stomach disorder! The story goes that the production of this film was very rough. It went on forever. Jane Fonda supposedly kept on pestering the Russian workers, and it became an expensive mess.