It's not common to see such a close combination of innocence with sharp satire, but that's how one would have to describe this film. On the one hand, it is a cheerful and likable film about children and their eternal struggle against the grown-ups, but on the other that means it's also essentially a feature-length ode to sticking it to the man. It seems that perhaps because it is a story about children, there is almost no need to disguise the satire, and it's simultaneously the more pointed and the more innocent for being so out in the open. Inochkin is expelled from camp for swimming to the island in the lake, and decides to stay and hide out instead of going home. The support for him among his follow camps becomes like a popular uprising, and the movement for Inochkin becomes like the white whale to the Ahab of the camp's director Dynin. And while it tears into the arbitrariness of authority, it's also quite entertaining with a slapstick sensibility to its gags and chases that also helps its parody elements to go down acceptably. There's a feeling of delightful chaos to all the proceedings which is authentically childlike -- from a title poking fun at the hypocrisy of the signs on the fronts of the camp to the admonishment of the fourth wall at the end. And the end -- with people magically flying across the river to the island -- is a bit surreal, but is like a tacit encouragement to break the rules, even of the method necessarily doesn't seem reasonably possible.

When I was 10 I watched this movie and loved it. When I was 20, I loved it more. This is an almost unknown gem of Soviet cinema, and now I enjoy it even more. The movie is not only a very funny comedy with excellent children and adult actors, but a perfect parody of Soviet life, of the relationship between society and Soviet power. The leader of the camp is so stupid and suspicious, that he turns people one by one to "resistance fighters", living in "illegality". The ordinary "citizens" of the camp don't know who is the informer, but they do their best to help the persecuted ones. In the beginning of the 1960's, Khrushtchev suddenly let to publish one of Solzhenitsyn's books, and to make movies like this -- and then the short springtime was over, and the bold masterpieces like these were buried for the next 25 years under the gigantic heap of dull books and films. If you won't laugh a lot watching this movie, write me angry letters!