God's Smile (2009)
A determined student from Chicago is forced to fulfill the last wish of his ailing grandfather. He has to travel to Odessa, Ukraine, and bring back his grandfather's cat.
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Please don't spend money on this.
If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.
This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.
The film may be flawed, but its message is not.
If you enjoy the Odessa humor the kind of self pity with bit of Jewish saddens in dead-end reality of the present days (in particular time, Soviet and post Soviet times) you are in for a treat. The film was shown as a part of Russian Film Festival in Chicago, before it came out in movie theaters in Moscow and other cities of former USSR. The film is full with nostalgia, good memories and elements of fairy tail. Being familiar with both cities Chicago and Odessa as well understanding the nature of Ex-Soviet Russian speaking immigrants in America and present and former Odessians ( Odessa Residents) I could say creators of the movie found and show really good depictions of main characters in a film. The cast of the film is excellent, seeing such talent of Soviet and Russian cinema as Armen Dzhijerhanyan, Roman Kartsev, Aleksanr Ponkratov-Cherniy and Stanislav Sadalsky as well as a new young actors was a real treat.