That may seem like a curious title for a goofy Soviet robot comedy, but it refers to something far stranger, one of the weirder ideas I’ve seen in a Science Fiction film.
The hero of our story, an obsessive young scientist named Vladimir Bantikov who works at The Institute of Intractable Problems, is frustrated that he is expected to take time away from his massively important scientific research to attend meetings, do morning calisthenics or other equally foolish things, and decides that the answer is to create an exact robot duplicate of himself.
Not that his robot is the weird idea. After all, we’ve seen that plot before — notably in the later (and far better) Mainland Chinese film, Dislocation.
Instead, it is Vladimir’s research project: he hopes to find a formula that will allow him to make rainbows at any time.
After all, when that rainbow comes out, the rain stops, and if you could summon one any time it was needed, you could put an end to flooding, hurricanes and other rain-related perils.
Right.
I don’t think that’s how that actually works.
However, that absurd but supposedly scientific notion fits the whole tone of the rest of the film, as it is a wacky and exaggerated sort of comedy.
In fact, what it reminds me of more than anything else is one of those Beach Party movies of the Sixties, the ones that starred Frankie and Annette.
After all, Vladimir works in a lab where an announcer on a video screen leads everyone in mandatory exercises every morning, and, because he doesn’t have the proper electronic equipment on hand, he has to put a gasoline powered motor into his robot double.
He programmed it with the sort of cold logic he aspires to, but it soon distinguishes itself as a speaker at corporate meetings, even if the average employees tend to think it is spouting nonsense.
Intelligent sounding nonsense, though.
Unfortunately, the robot wants to escape from its subservient role, and its greatest desire is that it longs to order people around.
Which means, after a remarkable display of physical prowess attracts the attention of the boss, the robot eagerly accepts the offer to run the Institute’s Fitness Camp.
Meanwhile, Vladimir fears what his invention could do now that it is running around loose — and can even disguise itself as other people — and sets off after it with the help of a bumbling cop…
Like those Frankie and Annette Beach Party movies, you get a lot of random gags, plenty of songs, and a lot of minor characters with their own comic quests (like the pair of friends trying to enjoy the liquor they smuggled into the camp). There’s a lot of slapstick humor, a goofy romance for Vladimir (who is too wrapped up in his scientific work and rational viewpoint to notice that the girl actually likes him), and plenty of silly chases, often sped up as in a Three Stooges comedy.
Curiously, the idea of a robot duplicate causing havoc because it doesn’t understand human society appeared a year later in yet another Soviet film, His Name Was Robert. That film even has a somewhat similar Beach Party Comedy vibe although it is set at a ski resort rather than a beach front fitness camp.
However, that film is more about the complexity of human interactions and the inability of a literal-minded and overly-logical machine to function in the real world. Formula Radugi, however, takes on the absurdities of the bureaucratic society, and takes potshots at the extreme rationalism and supposed efficiency guiding the robot’s ever more bizarre commands.
That sort of satire is rare in a Soviet film from the Sixties, even within the context of a Science Fiction film, even if it would become far more common in the Seventies and Eighties. I have no idea whether that was the official attitude of the Soviet government that year — or whether they got away with it because this is just a goofy robot Beach Party comedy.
Either way, it is fairly mild compared to some of our more savage satirical comedies.
Not that our fluffy little Beach Party comedies ever had anything remotely serious in them.
However, that satirical touch is really the only thing that distinguishes this minor little film. It works reasonably well as a minor little screwball Beach Party movie, with a goofy romance, a lot of slapstick humor, and plenty of eccentric characters.
But I suspect that Formula Radugi is only for those of you who, like myself, love Soviet era Science Fiction films…
rivets on the poster 