Jazzmen

Cute music movie from the last decade of Soviet Union. Amusing music and nice tap dance. Igor Sklyar and beautiful Elena Tsyplakova are charming. Aleksandr Pankratov-Chyornyy, Nikolay Averyushkin and Pyotr Shcherbakov are a funny trio. We do follow the amateur band's adventures in order to become famous jazz players, in a kind of Soviet John Carney movie. The script is not the most tight and there are some prejudice problems: besides reproducing the bad reputation attributed to Roma people, there are also two very unnecessary and criticized cases of blackface (one of a blond Russian singer potraying the role of an important Jazz star, and another one of Averyushkin's character pretending to be a black drummer in the story). Anyway, while the film has some drawbacks and sins, and is certainly not among the masterpieces of Mosfilm, it is nice and entertains.