The Russians are Coming, the Russians are Coming (A- or 3.5/4 stars)
1966's 'The Russians are Coming, the Russians are Coming' (produced & directed by Norman Jewison) is a humorous parody of the Cold War & small-town America. The setting is a fictitious New England holiday isle {not unlike Nantucket's seaside village} and, the story revolves around the accidental grounding on an offshore sandbar of a Russian submarine on the beach; which came too close to shoreline due to the skipper being curious to see America from a closer vantage point. Said skipper (Theodore Bikel) sends his top officer (Alan Arkin, very funny) to get assistance in the form of a motor boat to give it a tow off the sandbar. This gets the island in an uproar; leading to some light drama & some uproarious situations.
The Americans featured in the plot are mostly summertime residents. Some of them include characters played by Carl Reiner (as a Manhattan writer), Eva Marie Saint (his lovely wife), Brian Keith (as a bemused sheriff), Jonathan Winters (as an excitable deputy), Paul Ford (as the ultra-patriotic, sword-wielding civil defense chief who thinks there is an invasion afoot), & Tessie O'Shea (a harried, gossipy telephone operator).
This film received 4 Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Actor (Arkin, hilarious as the bewildered Russian lieutenant) & Best Adapted Screenplay, but it won none. The movie is a touch too long & contains some dead spots where the humor/plot happenstance/character interest wanes; like a romantic subplot that could have been excised altogether. But on the whole, it is a quality motion picture that posits that, despite tensions btwn. the two nations, Russians & Americans are basically alike and are not as fearsome as many would have believed.
The Americans featured in the plot are mostly summertime residents. Some of them include characters played by Carl Reiner (as a Manhattan writer), Eva Marie Saint (his lovely wife), Brian Keith (as a bemused sheriff), Jonathan Winters (as an excitable deputy), Paul Ford (as the ultra-patriotic, sword-wielding civil defense chief who thinks there is an invasion afoot), & Tessie O'Shea (a harried, gossipy telephone operator).
This film received 4 Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Actor (Arkin, hilarious as the bewildered Russian lieutenant) & Best Adapted Screenplay, but it won none. The movie is a touch too long & contains some dead spots where the humor/plot happenstance/character interest wanes; like a romantic subplot that could have been excised altogether. But on the whole, it is a quality motion picture that posits that, despite tensions btwn. the two nations, Russians & Americans are basically alike and are not as fearsome as many would have believed.