Second voyage The first and second films are incomparable on a worse/better basis. They are similar in their musicality and kind, not a bit toothy humor. The main characters are the same. Only now they are not strange barefoot rags, but the son-in-law of the Maharaja, the happy husbands of two beautiful wives and the owners of children - heirs. But neither beautiful wives nor children to the viewer will not show even the edge of the eye. Viewers will have to be content with just a brief mention of what they are. 11 years have passed since the unforgettable adventures of Goupi and Bagh. Their magical gifts of the ghost king are still with them, although youth goes away and the faster they lie in the same luxurious palace bed.
Finally, they get an offer to travel to the neighboring diamond-rich kingdom. And this opportunity friends could not miss. The kingdom is famous for unheard of luxury. But when the disguised Gupi and Bagha try to figure out what is really there, their eyes see a terrifying picture. The beautiful facade hides the ugly poverty of the people. (And here involuntarily recalls the water walk of Catherine II with the facades of flowering villages and beautiful settlers along the shores, sarcastically ridiculed later in “Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow” by Radishchev). But the main problem of the diamond kingdom is not only the totalitarian/authoritarian rule of a powerful ruler. Maharadaja does not use direct violence. He has enough of a funny scientist (something elusively similar to the lightweight version of Barphy from the first film) and a sinister exclusively man-made brainwashing apparatus. Does that ring a bell? The feeling that the author, more than 30 years before our time, foresaw that there are things no less dangerous than open totalitarianism and the genocide of our own people (we simply live in such a society and therefore do not know about some of its special properties) than the physical violence of a strong person against a weak one. After all, the prosperity of most modern world powers rests on nothing more than the same mass brainwashing of the broad masses of nothing, or almost nothing, through a multitude of media channels and interactive networks. People eat the information (the videos and comments) presented to them, taking it at face value. Although they see with their eyes and listen with their ears, only what reaches their consciousness is that a giant brain-clearing zombie system of social and communication-information high technologies has carefully filtered out. Here's a fairy tale, in which there is a hint!
Technically, cinema is much less attracted to the blockbuster than its predecessor. It clearly required much more modest costs from its producers. But there's more thought into it. And the thoughts are partly even seditious. What is worth at least the image of a recalcitrant teacher, the only one in the whole country refusing to speak in rhyme. Or the image of such an incredibly flimsy-looking singing “voice of the people”, but not broken by anyone and nothing, or a group of devotees (so I want to say recruited in a communist way) students. In general, if you do not think deeply, then everything looks cute and funny here. And do not forget that before us is just a children's fairy tale, in which good will surely win. Evil, though not punished, is safe. Maybe it's for the best. And so the blood on the screen of cinemas is more than enough.