Deti protiv volshebnikov

I like to look for a worst pieces of media I could find because I consider it a learning experience and in this way, Deti protiv Volshebnikov gives A LOT to learn from.

I've seen some bad movies. I watched a couple of bad slashers, I've seen most disgusting uhfunniest parodies out there, I've seen the Room, canadian Things, Neil Breen movies, but what makes this experience different is combination of atrocious dogmatism and Russian exceptionalism and absolute inability to make something that looks bearable. Every frame here looks like children drawing. Proportions are horrible, faces are unnatural, backgrounds are decent, but charecters don't exist in the same space with them.

But beyond ugliest movie known to humanity lies even uglier story. Main charecters are brave freedom fighters who came to destroy... children school. Because Russia considers a school that helps orphans a bad external influence, which is obviously performatively evil and depicted as ugly. And ugly people are obviously bad, so it's okay to bomb an entire island of children. You see, Russian's enemies are self-evidently evil, and it means no action against them is unprovoked.

In recent years this movie becomes only more disgusting and absolutely despicable. Considering that in real life it's Russian army that actually makes Ukrainian children orphans and takes them away from their families to russian's orphanages and families to give them proper "traditions", this movie becomes sad reminder that fascistic propaganda in the world is nowhere near to be dead and it's gonna raise it's ugly head many times more all over the world.

Children vs. Wizards is an experience I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. A movie made by the Russian Orthodox Church, it is a refreshingly bad take on Harry Potter as it establishes an interesting but more so alarming relationship between the wizards, anti-Christian and anti-Russian villains with a plan to bring down the Russian Empire, and the Muggles, heroic Russian patriots working towards bringing down this great evil and saving their motherland.

Our protagonists must infiltrate the magical school of the wizards and rescue the Russian students brainwashed into learning magic and, in doing so, disowning Russia. The man leading this whole operation is a cadet called Ivan, who funnily enough resembles a young Vladmir Putin-a truly weird coincidence if I've ever seen one. Now, Ivan has no weapons or tools to go up against the wizards, but not to worry, for he is armed with good old Christian faith! All he must do is pray against the Serbian and Scottish sinners and not even Voldemort could touch him!

Not only does this horrendous tale perpetuate religious supremacy, but it also preaches about the ideal woman, as we can see with Nadya's journey, the Russian commander's daughter who is falsely led to believe in the charm of the magical world and is subsequently taught to become a "whore" who takes advantage of men. These teachings are clearly painted as non-Christian and it is implied that virginity and loyalty to your husband is the only way to be a good Christian woman. Not only is dictating what women can or cannot do intensely misogynistic, but showing this sort of content to young and impressionable girls who just wanted to see a Russian adaptation of their favourite book series is a crime on its own.

Furthermore, in terms of general cinematic criticism, this movie is an eyesore. Funded by church-goers, the animation of this movie is so downright awful that the robotic movements and the lifeless characters seem almost comedic. I suppose this was a decision taken by the director to reflect the quality of the plot, which is perhaps one of the most boring pieces in all of cinematic history. For the first forty-five minutes, all the characters talk about is how wizards plan to invade Russia and how the patriots must stop them. There is no time given to flesh out the dull characters who are void of any personality, and any attempt at comedy as a way to appeal to the target audience falls hilariously flat. The climax can be predicted from a galaxy away and is devoid of any drama that keeps the audience invested. I guess even the director got bored of making this movie, because he decides to abruptly end it as soon as it touches the 90 minute mark. This was most likely an attempt to produce two more sequels so as to stay true to the original trilogy 'The Science of Winning', but I suppose even God could not permit so great a sin to fall upon humanity and we were thankfully saved from an international travesty.

....that you can see for free on YouTube. I'm not going to go into the gory details, but the film looks amazingly cheap despite the budget (I don't want to call it embezzlement, but if it barks like a dog....), and it is literally a stealth propaganda film for the Russian nationalism promoted by the Putin government mixed with the Russian Orthodox Christianity that is part and parcel of that quasi-ideology. The design of the characters break every rule of children's animation: the kids do not have large eyes (in fact they are beady and you don't see pupils unless you are close up) and their bodies look like un-rendered first drafts of computer-animated figures. There are car insurance ads with better animation!

Very much this is a Russian right-wing response to the "Harry Potter" books and films and its got the same mentality as the 1980s American anti-"Dungeons & Dragons" and interlinked anti-rock music campaign, except those things were grassroots movements started by Christian fundamentalists and here we have a branch of the State-approved Russian Orthodox Church working with funds from the State film board to create a film about evil wizards in a Scottish boarding school/castle infecting the minds of Russian orphans with occultic powers being opposed by teen undercover commandos from the Suvorov military academy (!), but with loads of violence and stiff live action segments. Russia has done much better in animation even in the 2010s, so the crudity of this film should not be seen as the norm by people who have never seen a Soviet or Russian-animated film.

The blatant propaganda of this film is only the tip of the iceberg. The characters look horrendous, and are just pasted on top of the backgrounds (the only decent part of this film) with no care to layering/blending. The writing contains no subtlety, and in case the on-the-nose dialogue spoken by the poorly-animated mouths of the characters that look worse than designs done in a student web-series do not convey it well enough for you, there are jarring cuts from the animated narrative to a live-action present day to pound the message into your skull with a cross. These live-action bits serve no other purpose. Not only do the lines not match the animated characters' mouths, but also not characters' in the live-action parts. The score is often inappropriate for the scenes it's used in, such as the intense metal track playing over some kids doing push-ups. There is one track that is played several times during the film that is a copy of John Williams's "The Invisibility Cloak/The Library Scene" from Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. The list of atrocities committed by this film is ceaseless. If you are considering watching this for any reason, I simply urge you to ABJURE.

Just a masterpiece. Intentionally made of worse animation and dialogue to appeal to zoomers and turn into a meme. No boring moments. Go read the book too.