The Mystery of the Third Planet

Futurama meets Yellow Submarine? All of that in ways, but this is certainly unique, while also having that distinctly Russian blend of colourful fantasy laced with sweet melancholy (toska?). The plot is of a scientist and his peppy daughter, together with a bearded pilot, on a quest to preserve rare animals from across the universe and, in so doing, encounter bandits. In many ways, like a Studio Ghibli adventure movie. It's good guys vs bad but I kept zoning out on plot details beyond that - it's hard not to among such luscious, analogue visuals and music. It's the kind of thoughtful psychedelia befitting of 1981-era with its inventive array of landscapes, characters and ideas, all backed by some wonderful soviet-era synth sounds and electric folk music. Compared with similar animation, it's not as dark as, say, Fantastic Planet (Le Planete Sauvage, 1973) but is equally as interesting to look at and groove along to. At 48m, I wished this was twice as long.

Have said many times about being a fan of Soyuzmultfilm, and consider most of their output of what has been personally seen (which is a vast majority of it, while needing to see more of their later work) classic level. This applies to all decades and genres, am especially fond of their 1950s work and their fantasies and adaptations of classic literature. As well as their animation techniques such as rotoscoping and cut out and those that use pre-existing classical music.

'The Mystery of the Third Planet' is one of not many forays into science fiction for Soyuzmultfilm, but it is a highly intriguing, beautifully done and quite excellent film. Even if it is not quite as historically significant as their, and Soviet animation's, first science-fiction animation 1953's 'Flight to the Moon' (also great, but to me this is the better film) directed by Zinaida and Valentina Brumberg. But so what? The quality matters much more, and this delivers on that in big spades. It is one of their best (relatively) later animations, in the top half quality-wise of their output and one of the better sci-fi animated films to exist in my view.

Occasionally, the visuals are ever so slightly over-elaborate in the more action-oriented moments and the momentum is not always there.

Also wish it was longer too, under an hour is not long enough.

Conversely, the animation is great. The backgrounds are gorgeously surreal as are the alien images (sometimes in a wonderfully nightmarish way), the character designs are imaginative at their best (that for Gromozeka especially, the arms are especially cleverly done) and the colours are full of atmosphere. It is hard to forget the soundtrack too, sometimes quite funky but also beautifully orchestrated and atmosphere-enhancing. Really liked the characters, a colourful bunch, with a likeable lead in Alisa, a not too scary but menacing enough villain and a comical character in Gromozeka that didn't grate.

From start to finish, the story is always immensely engaging, full of charm and far from cold emotionally. Some nice inventive moments too, it is cohesive, it never felt predictable and as far as animated films seen recently this is up there with among the most unique narratively and there is a clever twist regarding the villain. To me, the relaxed and not hurried pace was appreciated as was the at times surprisingly optimistic tone, the mystery element is suspenseful and intriguing and while the action is not fast and furious it still excites.

In conclusion, excellent. 9/10

This is the most brilliant cartoon i've ever seen. Striking imagery,great imagination, and brilliant music. Actually it's worth watching for the music alone. It's about a young girl(Alice)and her dads' travels in space where they meet a lot of weird characters and creatures. It's very dreamy and psychedelic like a weird 70's sci-fi movie. The version i've got is in Russian,so i didn't know what the hell was going on, but that makes it even more dreamy and mysterious. You can tell it's Russian by the distinctive animation. I know that it's been remastered and released in the USA with famous Hollywood actors doing all the voices with the music changed. The American version is part of the Stories From My Childhood series(which should be avoided by all costs, because they're all been "disneyfied"). I bought my copy from ebay and i think there is another copy( "RUSSIAN DVD","MULTFEIERVERK" N4, "CARTOONS" ). This DVD also has other brilliant Russian cartoons which are a million times more worth the money.Highly recommended. 10/10

This show is just amazing , definetely worth a watch ( recommend the original with sub titles the american dub is not good and made the characters quite blunt and removed all the original amazing soundtracks )

this show is over 40 years old yet still has the awesome nastolgia and vibe to it , a true diamond of its age , despite it not being as modern its still very good , this show deserves more credit and its sad to see people just overlook the show due to its age.

This was the first US bootleg video release of 1987 of the very popular and brilliant cartoon The Mystery of the Third Planet made in 1981 (see IMDb entry for it) about Alice's adventures in space based on the sci-fi series by a Russian writer Kir Bulychev. This release had the full original footage, music and sound effects but with significantly changed English dialogues, and no credits shown for the original Russian cartoon creators or script writers - just the American dubbing credits. Some of the character names were also changed: professor Seleznyov became professor Adam Steel, his daughter Alice - became Christen, although pilot Zelyony (Green in Russian) stayed as pilot Green, and so did the names of the two glorious captains Kim and Buran. A narrator's voice was added with a narrative that does not exist in the original, which is not of concern as it sticks to the story and helps to understand what's happening. In the video the title shown is actually "Stories from a Land Far, Far, Away: Mystery of the Third Planet". It is often referred to as "the dollar store version".

The main story line of the search for rare animals for the zoo involving space pirates and the two famous captains is not changed, however there are some significant changes in some of the story details. Like the whole episode with the birthday cake in the beginning, Alice wanting to go see a football match on the first planet they land on, drink of the six-armed friend of professor Steel, and so on. As the original footage was untouched they had to stick close to the original, but in some places the changed dialogues defeat the original intentions of the artists and of what's happening in the scene - a bit like in some other bootlegged Soviet sci-fi that were massacred by Amerasian bootleg movies producers, this one however not to the same extent.

Overall, the story stays fairly close to the original and is certainly very much watchable, especially if one prefers fully dubbed movies to subtitles. Is does, however, in my view, lacks many of the funny moments in dialogues, and a certain feel of romanticism of space travel that these dropped dialogues create, replaced with some more of a dry tone ones. This version is available on YouTube (http://youtu.be/NWTPMCD3SeQ). The video quality, however, is poor as it was recorded from a VHS source.

6 stars for this version and 9 for the original.