Miracle” Opens to Poor Reviews from Russian Film Critics “Miracle,” the Disney movie dramatizing the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team’s dramatic victory over the Soviet Union, opened nationwide on Friday to critical praise. But the film has received very negative reviews by critics in Russia, where it debuted on Saturday.
Not a single Russian reviewer gave the movie a positive critique, with the best write-up coming from an editorial in the ‘St. Petersburg Times’ which called the movie: “Absolutely, 100-percent awful. In the history of cinema, nothing has been worse, except maybe ‘Rocky IV’ and ‘Red Dawn.’” Particularly ****ing of ‘Miracle’ was Russia’s most acclaimed movie critic duo, Ilanov & Khruschiav, who gave it only one out of a possible five nesting dolls, their lowest rating ever.
“’Miracle’ is typical American revisionist history,” wrote Yuri Ilanov of the ‘Moscow News.’ “The American public can swallow these lies and tell themselves it’s true, as they always do, but those who value the truth know what happened in 1980 was different than what was portrayed in the movie. Several of the Soviet players were injured and the goalie had food poisoning – no doubt a plot by an American chef. This was not an upset for the ages. It was a meaningless hockey game where one lucky team beat another team full of proud, brave, injured players and a heroic goalie with diarrhea. Will any of the Red Army players ever admit to being injured or sick and make a movie about it? No, for they are too proud and not motivated by money like the Americans.”
Sergei Datsyuk, a noted movie critic on Moscow’s Channel 7, said that the movie’s message that the U.S. victory was a rallying cry for the entire nation “shows how pathetic America was at that point and how much it feared being crushed by the superior Soviet Union. Only an inferior nation, and inferior people even, would actually think beating another country at hockey really meant anything. It was a game they would have won once in a thousand tries. It meant nothing.”
Tatyana Slegr of the ‘Kursk Times’ wrote that ‘Miracle’’s release in America 24 years after the game was played says more about America’s present state than the world in 1980. “Why can’t America let go of this trivial little game that was played nearly a quarter century ago? Because they have nothing else. America today is a nation that must live in the past. It must grab on to each little victory it has ever had to try to salvage its future and explain its worthless existence. But it will not work. America will one day crumble just as we always knew it would.”
Disney executives say they are not expecting much of the movie’s international gross to come from Russia and are primarily counting on its domestic box office and DVD sales for profit.
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