KZBlog

We bought Kairat-Champion. Virgin #1 the other day and watched it. Off-hand it’s a decent movie that still needs a lot of work. Obviously it’s trying to be a teen movie with lots of sex jokes à la American Pie and it falls into the same traps those movies tend to. A series of funny situations but no jokes. Little attention to the plot or characters making it hard to follow what is going on, or much care. But overall, not a bad first effort with some fun moments.

Basically, Kairat (Turar Dabilbekov in his first movie role) plays a loser who is abused by his roommate, his professors and especially by Tanya (Regina Iskandarova), a tough fellow student from the orphanage to whom he owes 7500 tenge. When his friend gets him a date with best prostitute in the whole country (Yulia Zaitseva, who really looks awful and unconvincing as the sexiest woman in all of Kazakhstan in this movie), he ends up being late and getting nothing. This is the kind of loser Kairat is.

Enter an oligarch (Bakhtiyar Kozha), who goes to the same prostitute incidentally. He welcomes his daughter (Linda Nigmatulina) home from study abroad only to find she is a lesbian and engaged. After much hand wringing and probably one of the funnier scenes in the move, she agrees to be impregnated and produce a grandson for her father before marrying her girlfriend. In the search to find the perfect man, it turns out that the virgin who never drinks, smokes or stays out late may be the champion sperm donor in all of Kazakhstan!

It’s a good premise and could have been very funny, but there were too many subplots and distractions. For example, the daughter also brings home a woman for her Poppa to marry (why would she do that?), played by a man in drag (Why not?). This Madeline begins a subplot of trying to seduce the oligarch and keep away other women, but she isn’t on camera often enough for the device to work or for us to care. There’s also an encounter with the military instructor that comes out of nowhere and is quickly forgotten.

The fact that Kairat was supposed to go home to Shimkent early in the movie but never does is also dropped–wouldn’t Mom be a little worried when he didn’t show up? Why was he going home in the middle of the school year anyway?

Also a huge chunk of the movie involved women wanting to sleep with Kairat because he is the number one virgin, but it isn’t completely clear what they want. Do they want to become pregnant by him–and if so, why do his student classmates want to be pregnany? Do they want to share the cash reward the oligarch will pay? Do they think he is a stud in bed? It’s never established but just accepted as funny if women are throwing themselves at him and showing him their breasts all through out the movie.

Despite an all star cast that included experienced actors like Linda Nigmatulina and Bakhtiyar Kozha with cameos by Sergei Polocyan and Nurtas Adambayev (ex-KVN, now on Nasha Kazasha), the acting was not great. Likely more accurately, the directing was bad. Characters came on, said their lines, and went off, with little emotion or linking to their character or the scene. Jokes weren’t delivered well, with the film clearly relying on the situation itself to be funny. In particular, there was no sign of growing love between the two main characters. Suddenly, he decides he loves her, having previously shown no emotion to her whatsoever. She rejects him and then the scene where she changes her mind is filmed with music over the dialogue, so you never actually hear her declare her love, a lazy moment for any screenwriter and director.

Honestly, the cameos were silly, particularly the short subplot involving the singer Nagima Yeskaliyeva Pogocyan who play a woman who wants Kairat’s sperm and the jealous gun-wielding husband (both of whom get lead credits). It felt tacked on, as if the president of KTK had called them into his office and said, “OK, we need to make people watch this move. You will be in it. Go!”

Surprisingly, the best actor in the movie was Turar Davilbekov, himself a movie virgin. He was especially good at the beginning, playing a naive loser who gets walked over by everyone. There was a brief and wonderful moment where he stood up for himself, and he made that transformation quite effectively. However the script let him down and he went back to being a loser quickly thereafter. Regina Iskandarova also did a pretty good job even if she just had one note.

So overall, I’d recommend watching this movie if you have nothing else to do. I would certainly go see what Turar Davilbekov is up to next. But better overall to rent American Pie.