Punch-drunk, decadently designed slice of eye candy.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
Slant Magazine by Diego Semerene
An over-the-top Russian musical about hipsters set in 1950s Moscow, where getting a non-pastel-colored tie is a mafia-mediated operation and a saxophone is considered a concealed weapon? Yes, please.
The hipster moment may have faded fast through repression and attrition, but in Todorovsky's reading, it was crucially formative on today's Russian youth.
Hipsters is also a musical (in an intentionally naive "Absolute Beginners" vein), and while everything looks glinty and gorgeous, the story's political edge is dulled by excessive levity.
Although a massive hit at home, taking approximately $16 million at the wickets, this great-looking but tonally uneven pic won't jive with audiences quite so well anywhere else.
San Francisco Chronicle by Mick LaSalle
The first Russian musical in more than 50 years, Hipsters is appreciated best as a curiosity.
The New York Times by Stephen Holden
Who knows if anything remotely resembling the culture of Hipsters really existed? It's a musical, after all. In any case this movie, which won the 2009 Nika (the Russian Oscar) for best picture, is an endearing curiosity that, at 125 minutes, is as badly in need of a trim as the hair of its comically coiffed dandies.
When it comes time for a Hollywood remake, Depp would make a great Mels.