"Family is a universal thing," Everybody Loves Raymond creator Phil Rosenthal notes in his light-hearted documentary about translating his sitcom for a Russian audience. "But unfortunately, so is show business." This explains the various producers sitting around with nothing much constructive to say, and critical casting decisions being made by studio executives who don't seem to know much about comedy, or even television. There isn't much that can explain the wild dogs wandering around the grounds of what is supposedly the biggest and most important Russian film, which also happens to look like an abandoned factory.
Rosenthal's film is structured as the comic chronicle of a quest in which a well-meaning schlub of an American (Rosenthal, eager to play the baffled naïf) goes abroad trying to figure out how to make people laugh in a completely different language. He explains that after the translation of some sitcoms like The Nanny and ...Married With Children into versions that have run very successfully in nations around the world, the studios are trying to figure out which shows they can pitch for other markets. Rosenthal narrates as a camera crew follows him from his seemingly contented life as the creator of one of the last nearly universally-beloved American sitcoms to a grey and rainy Moscow, where perplexity and international discord awaits.
Things don't start off that promisingly for Everybody Loves Kostya. Rosenthal seems at first overly reliant on reality-TV-style editing and sound cues that belabor each joke. His relationships are rocky at the beginning, with an uncommunicative driver and a costume designer who seems intent on dressing the mom (supposed to be a middle-class homemaker with middle-of-the-road tastes) in the eye-searing togs of a Muscovite fashion victim. He worries for his life but only occasionally, such as when somebody asks him whether he has K&R ("Kidnap & Ransom") insurance, then waves off his concerns, saying it never happens. (Rosenthal notes that it happens "often enough" that there's an abbreviation for it. His translator has a different take: "Nobody would kidnap him," she chuckles. "He's not big enough.")
Normally, watching a sitcom get made would seemingly be about as interesting as sitting in Moscow traffic. But Rosenthal's emphasis on the story's organic roots and the medium's theatricality puts some heft into what is admittedly a fairly skimpy scenario. Though admittedly, Raymond is best known now as that thing that comes on weeknights before the local news, Rosenthal's argument - pitched relentlessly against wooden-faced writers and producers who don't need a translator to tell him that they don't want his input - that each episode is in fact a miniature play manages to hold water.
Against this backdrop of backstage machinations, which include Rosenthal trying to get someone to coach the actor taking over the Ray Romano role on how to convincingly act like he had just been kicked in the crotch, Rosenthal takes in the Russian scene. It's sporadically enlightening, though most of his attempts to bridge the cultural gap in search of universal attitudes towards bickering families, embarrassment, and the other key components of an American sitcom, feel forced. But Rosenthal's enough of a natural gagster that he can save most anything with a joke that doesn't pretend to hide his fish-out-of-water bafflement. Standing in a hallway at the studio that looks like an abandoned warehouse, with black rot in the ceiling and lighting seemingly borrowed from the set of Saw, Rosenthal says that if you're still, "You can hear the cancer."
Rosenthal's film is structured as the comic chronicle of a quest in which a well-meaning schlub of an American (Rosenthal, eager to play the baffled naïf) goes abroad trying to figure out how to make people laugh in a completely different language. He explains that after the translation of some sitcoms like The Nanny and ...Married With Children into versions that have run very successfully in nations around the world, the studios are trying to figure out which shows they can pitch for other markets. Rosenthal narrates as a camera crew follows him from his seemingly contented life as the creator of one of the last nearly universally-beloved American sitcoms to a grey and rainy Moscow, where perplexity and international discord awaits.
Things don't start off that promisingly for Everybody Loves Kostya. Rosenthal seems at first overly reliant on reality-TV-style editing and sound cues that belabor each joke. His relationships are rocky at the beginning, with an uncommunicative driver and a costume designer who seems intent on dressing the mom (supposed to be a middle-class homemaker with middle-of-the-road tastes) in the eye-searing togs of a Muscovite fashion victim. He worries for his life but only occasionally, such as when somebody asks him whether he has K&R ("Kidnap & Ransom") insurance, then waves off his concerns, saying it never happens. (Rosenthal notes that it happens "often enough" that there's an abbreviation for it. His translator has a different take: "Nobody would kidnap him," she chuckles. "He's not big enough.")
Normally, watching a sitcom get made would seemingly be about as interesting as sitting in Moscow traffic. But Rosenthal's emphasis on the story's organic roots and the medium's theatricality puts some heft into what is admittedly a fairly skimpy scenario. Though admittedly, Raymond is best known now as that thing that comes on weeknights before the local news, Rosenthal's argument - pitched relentlessly against wooden-faced writers and producers who don't need a translator to tell him that they don't want his input - that each episode is in fact a miniature play manages to hold water.
Against this backdrop of backstage machinations, which include Rosenthal trying to get someone to coach the actor taking over the Ray Romano role on how to convincingly act like he had just been kicked in the crotch, Rosenthal takes in the Russian scene. It's sporadically enlightening, though most of his attempts to bridge the cultural gap in search of universal attitudes towards bickering families, embarrassment, and the other key components of an American sitcom, feel forced. But Rosenthal's enough of a natural gagster that he can save most anything with a joke that doesn't pretend to hide his fish-out-of-water bafflement. Standing in a hallway at the studio that looks like an abandoned warehouse, with black rot in the ceiling and lighting seemingly borrowed from the set of Saw, Rosenthal says that if you're still, "You can hear the cancer."
