Unnecessary rain At the turn of the eighties of the last century, on one-sixth of the land, domestic animation began unconditional capitulation to a Zabugorny competitor. Moreover, the blow to the children’s value system, tilted so far, was caused not even by high-budget and multicolored projects of Disney-level corporations, but by the usual TV consumer, like “Duck Stories” or the adventures of unkilled Tom and Jerry. Why, then, the good and eternal animation of Norstein, Cherkassky or Atamanov was lost without a fight and remained only in the moral teachings of those born in the USSR? If desired, the answer to this question can be obtained in this cartoon.
The "younger rain" is an ordinary unit of the army of short animation works. It was such cartoons that filled the pieces of allocated airtime of a couple of state (and there were no other) channels. They weren't remembered as "Carlson" or "Well, wait!", "Gray neck" or "Golden antelope," but regularly disappointed a breathless tomboy running to call signs "Good night, kids!" (the ten-minute standard is from there). Puppet performances were not loved by special dislike, and, if there was no memorable hero (melancholic elephant in glasses or doggie-jacket), it was a double fail and a notch, leading to the adoration of the Black Cloak, lurking behind the turn of several years, flying on the wings of the night.
Although, from the height of the years lived, returning with a revision in the 60-70-80 years, you note the completeness and logic of the plot with an obligatory moral knot, interesting moves and shots, the originality of the created puppets. “The Youngest Rain” tells about such eternal children’s problems as “Grow up, then you will be”, loneliness among those who do not understand others (remember Svante Svantesson?), the first angular and unappealing childish creativity, good deeds and much more, surprisingly compactly packaged in a ten-minute format.
Of course, you can twist over the graphic twitching of awkward characters (the technical side and quality of the film were the eternal trouble of Soviet animators), some strangeness of the invented world - four brothers: Spring Rain, Summer Rain, Autumn Rain and, whoever you think, no, not Winter - just Junior. This last character for most of the film on the naivety of the soul created various ugliness - increased dogs and flowers, arranged floods and petty dirty things to working people, but after a moral assessment of mental abilities corrected the sight and became an angel bell. But the boy who did not swallow the scenes with Piggy and Stepachka wanted another.
Rosalia Zelma, the study of the filmography of which led to this, frankly, passing picture, was in this project the director under the leadership of Stella Aristakesova, especially not won laurels in the field of animation (I barely remembered her “Just so”), had in his arsenal such a miracle as “Girl and Dolphin”. Unfortunately, most of the other works remained at the level of "Rain" (normal, but not loved by children "Fantazer", "Philipka", "Secrets of Toys"). True, you understand quality only with age and in comparison (well, for example, with the later kitschy “Pronin” and “Slondike”). And even with patronizing notes, you can grumble about the current SpongeBob and unscrupulous Shrek, but in your heart you understand that the Rainers did not have a chance initially.