Laikals The greatest movie ever made..!

Hulkeasexo it is the rare 'crazy' movie that actually has something to say.

Lucia Ayala It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

Darin One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

namashi_1 Written, Produced & Directed by The Late/Great Paul Mazursky, 'Moscow on the Hudson' is a strange & wonderful, where our beloved Robin Williams soars in the title role. This performance only makes his loss all the more worse. What an actor & what a performance! 'Moscow on the Hudson' Synopsis: When a Russian musician defects in Bloomingdale's department store in New York, he finds adjusting to American life more difficult than he imagined.'Moscow on the Hudson' is about a man seeking freedom. We see the protagonist Vladimir Ivanov (Williams, of course) struggle initially in Moscow & later take the leap of faith in the US, to only realize that freedom is the best thing that can happen to anyone. His journey is real, as its sad & happy, real & affecting, as it progresses. And Williams owns the part. He speaks Russian as if it was his first language since birth & portrays a man torn between family & freedom. Williams is extraordinary & this is a performance, that definitely deserves to be watched again. A special mention for the delightful María Conchita Alonso, who enacts Williams' lady-love to perfection.Mazursky's Writing is excellent & his Direction, even better. 'Moscow on the Hudson' is a winner in almost every way. Strongly Recommended!

imbluzclooby I seeing this when I was in high school with my father. We laughed a couple of times and may have cheered for the Ivan character at liberating choice to defect, but the overall movie was pretty shallow and didn't explore it's liberally slanted memes.The purpose of this movie is predicated on a joke that gets repeated over and over again. The joke is - let's have Robin Williams imitate a Russian immigrant and have him walk around a wild city like New York and see what happens. Yes, I it that premise would be more interesting than if he took a trip to rural Texas or Wyoming. New York, with all of its outlandish and colorful sights may provoke much wonder in a wide eyed soul who is inexperienced to such stimuli. So the movie supplants itself in this premise and exploits to unrealistic and sometimes silly parodies. I thought Moscow on the Hudson worked better as a parody, but when it tried to overreach as a meaningful commentary on American life and morals, it lost its momentum and fell flat.Also, a movie increases its appeal and intrigue when it inserts a beautiful and sexy love interest. Maria Conchita Alonso fulfills that promise. I thought their meet cute was okay and I was willing to go along for that ride in Ivan's American experience, but she is sort of treated as an object of desire who is romantic, but also capable of stereotypical tantrums and resistance. There is also an unflattering scene with Williams and Alonso in a bathtub where he is rubbing his hands over her breasts and expressing his prurient desires. Unfortunately, he ends up looking like a lecherous pervert. Both of them look tawdry in that scene and it also ruined his likability for his character who is supposed to come off as a sweet soul. The friendship between Ivan and his Black American friend looks forced as well. Mazursky inaccurately portrays the Black American family as being a family of goodwill and munificence. I know there are some political undertones to Moscow on the Hudson and they are really offensive inasmuch as they allow us to make up our own mind. there are a few funny moments that I will not mention. This is not a great movie by any means. I would never consider it a cornerstone masterpiece of Cultural studies. It is simply a comedy that makes a feeble attempt to be serious.

Erik Flesch Moscow on the Hudson is a fabulous example of a pretty-good movie chock full of 1980s artifacts like Jordache jeans, feathered hair-dos and Afro Sheen, that is often surprisingly interesting, sensitive and even occasionally profound -- especially on the level of the victory of the individual soul over totalitarianism, and the defense of American capitalism against Marxism.This film brings back a flood of cultural memories of the Eighties, the decade immediately preceding the collapse of the Soviet Union, a time in the United States when our political and cultural self-esteem matched our economic prosperity. It doesn't hurt that this movie stars a young bearded Robin Williams with heart (and Russian soul!) and a really cute and occasionally nude young Maria Conchita Alonso (a real-life Venezuelan immigrant) full of Italian ion and an ambitious independent spirit.Only in the early 1980s could blue jeans from Bloomies, velvety white toilet paper, supermarket coffee, studio apartments, hot-dog stands, cab-driving jobs, and U.S. citizenship ceremonies be portrayed as symbols -- indeed even weapons -- of democratic capitalism in a world still governed "from Stettin on the Baltic to Varna on the Black Sea" by the totalitarian evil against which President Ronald Reagan called a crusade two years earlier in his famous 1982 Evil Empire speech to the House of Commons.The political content of the movie is startlingly black-and-white by today's standards of multiculturalism and moral relativism when many academics defend dictatorships' "sovereign right" to exist, and so the offhand manner with which at every turn the film's writers Paul Mazursky and Leon Capetanos deliver praise to political liberty, capitalism and America's unique cultural acceptance of immigrants dedicated to the pursuit of happiness is remarkable. While the way in which their praises are conveyed may from time-to-time seem a little cheesy, sentimental or dated, their profound significance is not diminished.Exactly because capitalism is an economic system as well as a social system, Robin William's character is portrayed as a Russian seeking a remedy for his literal physical hunger and basic financial requirements of life that socialism fails to satisfy. His Russian friend, played wonderfully by Elya Baskin, suffers from socialism's other often dramatized evil -- its humiliating and paralyzing effect on an individual's creative mind and psychology. Perhaps it is precisely because the film's focus is on Williams' character that Moscow on the Hudson at times comes off as exhibiting the over-the-top 1980s commercialism that made it popular then and a little startling in today's Greener age.Russophiles can get a kick out of some of the Russia scenes. Highlights include the drab Moscow Circus on Tsvetnoi Boulevard including full-figured women in polyester; sour old babushkas enforcing their place in line; and shoe vendors pushing the wrong sizes. They might also find some treatment of Soviet atrocities like sending war protesters to mental institutions, or neighbors reporting dissidents to the KGB a bit trite, but not inaccurate. Such horrors are no less relevant in Putin's Russia of today (October 2006), where the most recent contract killing of independent politicians, businessmen and intellectuals is journalist Anna Politkovskaya.While I've focused on the political content, this movie is not primarily a political piece, but a love story; and not primarily a love story, but a romance of personal initiative -- of immigrants who choose to reject the oppressive circumstances they left behind and to seize the chance to pursue their material survival and eventually, individual happiness. The aims of the film are high, maybe even too high at times for this light film to be able to achieve fully; but it is definitely touching and fairly deals with the array of issues every immigrant faces on a variety of levels. I personally found the love relationship between Williams and Alonso to be touchingly realistic at times; and the individualistic focus of this film to be refreshing, as well as a shocking reminder of how inappropriately self-conscious the American media has become in publicly asserting the universal truth and appeal of its core principles: freedom and capitalism.

littlebeartoe This movie is generally under-rated. Williams is great; he retains some of his own off-the-wall attitude within an entirely believable immigrant persona.The funny moments are funny, the emotional moments are emotional, and the philosophical moments are thought-provoking. I especially liked the theme of the Williams character struggling to gain street cred' as a blues musician.The movie is proud of America, but critical of the troubles immigrants face. It's not hyperbolic, and I appreciate that. The immigrants portrayed don't face the worst possible situations. They just struggle in a way that is probably quite familiar to real immigrants. (I'm no immigrant, but my wife is, and I've had my share of friends, employees, and colleagues who have had such struggles.)