A schlubby young man decides to go into smuggling to replace the money his mother gave him for renovations and he has misspent. 2018's Dzidzio Kontrabass (DZIDZIO Контрабас) is a little like A Hard Day's Night meets Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back as we follow fictionalised versions of the Ukrainian band Dzidzio's members having goofy adventures across Ukraine. A lot of the humour doesn't translate but I found one or two jokes to be effective.
The film's protagonist is played by lead singer Mykhailo Khoma, also called Dzidzio. As the film opens, he goes to a wedding with the intent of bolstering his reputation and gaining cash but immediately has the misfortune of crashing into a car belonging to a gangster. So he robs a church donation box, disguises himself as a priest, and buys a bunch of cigarettes to smuggle into Poland. A lot of the humour in this movie seems to be blasphemy humour. It reminded me a little of the '90s in the U.S. If Marilyn Manson had been a comedy band, they might have been like Dzidzio.
As I said, a lot of jokes require greater familiarity with Ukrainian culture than I have but some of them really land. I really liked a bit where Dzidzio has a friend call his mother to lie to her about the progress of renovations in the house they're standing in, only the friend unknowingly has the phone's camera facing the wrong way so she sees Dzidzio himself standing anxiously amid the tattered, neglected construction materials and bare plywood walls.
Dzidzio Kontrabass is available on the band's official YouTube channel (it's embedded above).
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