A series of Soviet Russian puppet stop-motion shorts created between 1976 and 1991. The series as a whole doesn't really have a name, so everyone calls them by the name of the first and most popular episode: 38 Parrots.
Youtube has all 10 of the shorts with subtitles:
- 1. 38 Parrots
- 2. Where goes the Little Elephant?
- 3. How to cure a Boa/Python?
- 4. Boa/Python’s Grandma
- 5. What if it Works?
- 6. A Hello for Monkey
- 7. Tomorrow will be Tomorrow
- 8. Exercises for a Tail
- 9. The Great Cover-Up
- 10.The Visual Aid
Each short has a problem that main characters (a thoughtful python, hyperactive monkey, nerdy elephant, and eccentric parrot) try to solve using off-kilter logic and wordplay.
This series provides examples of:
- Animal Stereotypes: A curious airhead monkey and thoughtful python.
- Apologises a Lot: The elephant, being a parody of the Russian Intelligentsia, is extremely polite.
- Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!:Monkey: I don't know how to ponder the same thing twice.
- Four-Temperament Ensemble: Monkey is sanguine; Parrot is choleric; Elephant is melancholic; Python is phlegmatic.
- Insane Troll Logic: Since (according to folk wisdom) the law of gravity was invented when an apple fell on Isaac Newton's head, we can revert it if we throw a coconut on someone's tail! It doesn't work
- Science Is Wrong: In Great Cover-Up, the protagonists want to cancel the law of gravity... because it's immoral to hit you on the head with a coconut.
- Tertiary Sexual Characteristics: Python's grandmother is a python wearing a babushka.
- The End: Each episode ends with a big red inscription "The end of the movie"
