''Space Dogs'' (a.k.a. ''Belka & Strelka — Star Dogs'', original: ''Белка и Стрелка. Звёздные собаки'', ''Belka i Strelka. Zvyozdnye sobaki'') is a 2010 Russian
computer-animated
Computer animation is the process used for digitally generating animations. The more general term computer-generated imagery (CGI) encompasses both static scenes ( still images) and dynamic images (moving images), while computer animation refe ...
adventure
An adventure is an exciting experience or undertaking that is typically bold, sometimes risky. Adventures may be activities with danger such as traveling, exploring, skydiving, mountain climbing, scuba diving, river rafting, or other extreme spo ...
comedy film
A comedy film is a category of film which emphasizes humor. These films are designed to make the audience laugh through amusement. Films in this style traditionally have a happy ending (black comedy being an exception). Comedy is one of the ol ...
. The film is based on the
Soviet space dogs
During the 1950s and 1960s the Soviet space program used dogs for sub-orbital and orbital space flights to determine whether human spaceflight was feasible. In this period, the Soviet Union launched missions with passenger slots for at le ...
Belka and Strelka
Belka (Белка, literally, "squirrel", or alternatively "Whitey") and Strelka (Стрелка, "little arrow") spent a day in space aboard Korabl-Sputnik 2 (Sputnik 5) on 19 August 1960 before safely returning to Earth. They are the first hig ...
, and honors the first animals who survived an orbital space trip, the
Korabl-Sputnik 2
Korabl-Sputnik 2 (russian: Корабль-Спутник 2, lit=Ship-Satellite 2), also known as Sputnik 5 in the West, was a Soviet Union, Soviet artificial satellite, and the third test flight of the Vostok spacecraft. It was the first space ...
flight in August, 1960. In
Poland
Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populous ...
it became the leader of the box-office on its first weekend, although in the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
it grossed poorly, making only $14,408 due to its limited release.
Plot
A man in black is carrying a small cage from the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
to the
U.S.
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...
president
John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), often referred to by his initials JFK and the nickname Jack, was an American politician who served as the 35th president of the United States from 1961 until his assassination ...
. In the cage is a present from Soviet premier
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (– 11 September 1971) was the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964 and chairman of the country's Council of Ministers from 1958 to 1964. During his rule, Khrushchev s ...
to
Caroline Kennedy
Caroline Bouvier Kennedy (born November 27, 1957) is an American author, attorney, and diplomat serving in the Biden administration as the United States Ambassador to Australia since 2022. She previously served in the Obama administration as the ...
, a stray dog named Pushok. He finds the other Kennedy pets and tells them his story.
Three years earlier, in
Moscow
Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 million ...
1960, a strange man showed up, who was catching street dogs and taking them away. Once he tried to catch a
terrier
Terrier (from Latin ''terra'', 'earth') is a type of dog originally bred to hunt vermin. A terrier is a dog of any one of many breeds or landraces of the terrier type, which are typically small, wiry, game, and fearless. Terrier breeds vary ...
puppy named
Strelka Strelka may refer to:
Places
* Strelka (inhabited locality), several inhabited localities in Russia including:
** Strelka, Amur Oblast
** Strelka, Lesosibirsk, Krasnoyarsk Krai
** Strelka, Vologda Oblast
** Strelka, Voronezh Oblast
* a small cape a ...
, but she ran away with her friend, a rat named Lenny. Then, Strelka went to dig for bones and Venya went to a pay telephone to get some money.
While Strelka was running from the strange man, Vova, a circus pig, became too large to fly in his rocket, and
Belka
BelKA (an acronym from Belarusian: Беларускі Касмічны Апарат, Belarusian Cosmic Apparatus) was intended to be the first satellite of independent Belarus.
Satellite
It was a remote sensing satellite that utilizes the USP ( ...
, a circus dog, flew in his place. Belka loses control of the rocket and flew away from the circus. After some time she crashed onto the payphone where Lenny was looking for coins. The crash broke the phone and Lenny got all the money from the broken phone. After the crash Belka, Strelka, and Lenny were met by three other street dogs: a
French bulldog named Bula, a
pug
The Pug is a breed of dog originally from China, with physically distinctive features of a wrinkly, short-muzzled face and curled tail. The breed has a fine, glossy coat that comes in a variety of colors, most often light brown (fawn) or blac ...
named Mula, and a
wolf
The wolf (''Canis lupus''; : wolves), also known as the gray wolf or grey wolf, is a large canine native to Eurasia and North America. More than thirty subspecies of ''Canis lupus'' have been recognized, and gray wolves, as popularly u ...
named Pirate. Belka and Strelka ran from the other street dogs but the next morning all three of them were caught by the strange man.
After being caught the dogs are put on a train to
Baikonur
Baikonur ( kk, Байқоңыр, ; russian: Байконур, translit=Baykonur), formerly known as Leninsk, is a city of republic significance in Kazakhstan on the northern bank of the Syr Darya river. It is currently leased and administered ...
where they ended up at a Soviet space program training center. There they met their trainer, Kazbek the
German Shepherd
The German Shepherd or Alsatian is a German breed of working dog of medium to large size. The breed was developed by Max von Stephanitz using various traditional German herding dogs from 1899.
It was originally bred as a herding dog, for he ...
, who had to choose the two best dogs from the group. A month before the launch date, the chosen group was Bula and Mula, but on the final training day, Lenny came in first, with Belka and Strelka in 2nd and 3rd place. Belka and Strelka needed to fly with Lenny because he was first and the flight group was chosen.
At the end of their flight, Strelka wanted to stay in space, because her mother had said that her father, Sirius, is living among the stars. Kazbek shows up having stowed away on their flight and tried to convince Strelka to turn around. They saw a formation of objects flying towards them, believing them to be Space Dogs but they turned out to be meteorites, they got hit by a meteorite shower and the rocket caught fire from the damage. Strelka, Lenny, and Kazbek went to the back of the rocket to fight the fire with their feeding formula as water, Belka was afraid but still jumped through the fire ring into the driver's seat to turn the rocket back towards Earth. Strelka extinguished the fire, and Kazbek confessed his love for Belka. The dogs look at various constellations and Strelka salutes
Sirius
Sirius is the list of brightest stars, brightest star in the night sky. Its name is derived from the Ancient Greek language, Greek word , or , meaning 'glowing' or 'scorching'. The star is designated α Canis Majoris, Latinisation ...
in lieu of her father. The dog flight crew makes it back to Earth alive.
Strelka, Belka, and Lenny receive a hero's welcome, and it is discovered that Kazbek stowed away on the flight, but the Scientist in charge of the project tells him that Soviet
Propaganda
Propaganda is communication that is primarily used to influence or persuade an audience to further an agenda, which may not be objective and may be selectively presenting facts to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded ...
won't allow the world to know that a stow-away had been on the flight.
The other Kennedy pets, led by the cat, don't believe Pushok's story, except one French dog who sees the
Cosmonaut
An astronaut (from the Ancient Greek (), meaning 'star', and (), meaning 'sailor') is a person trained, equipped, and deployed by a human spaceflight program to serve as a commander or crew member aboard a spacecraft. Although generally r ...
Patch on Pushok's cushion. She then asks him to tell her what happened afterward.
Strelka returns to live with her mother. Venya holds conferences, telling his story to any willing to listen to him. Belka returns to her circus as the main star, flying the repaired rocket from earlier in the film. Kazbek lives together with his love Belka, and everyone lived happily ever after.
During the end credits, real-life archive footage from the
Soviet
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...
Space Program
A space program is an organized effort by a government or a company with a goal related to outer space.
Lists of space programs include:
* List of government space agencies
* List of private spaceflight companies
* List of human spaceflight prog ...
and its
Soviet space dogs
During the 1950s and 1960s the Soviet space program used dogs for sub-orbital and orbital space flights to determine whether human spaceflight was feasible. In this period, the Soviet Union launched missions with passenger slots for at le ...
is shown.
Production
The directors Svyatoslav Ushakov and Inna Evlannikova, as specialists with foreign experience, were finally approved. Evlannikova - in the words of the executive producer, "a powerful production worker" - worked with everything that was directly related to animation. Ushakov was mainly engaged in the development of an artistic concept, storyboards, etc.
To recreate Moscow in the 60s and the cosmodrome, animators studied photographs of those years and newsreels for a long time. The prototype of the circus artist Belka was the circus artist - the heroine of Lyubov Orlova from the 1936 feature film " Circus ". The director Svyatoslav Ushakov specially went to the Circus on Tsvetnoy Boulevard, which was the prototype of the Belka circus.
In parallel with Russian animators at KinoAtis studio, two
India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
n subcontractors “Cornershop Animation "and" Blowfish FX ", which were engaged in animation and rendering, worked with elaborate materials received from KinoAtis using
Autodesk Maya
Autodesk Maya, commonly shortened to just Maya ( ), is a 3D computer graphics application that runs on Windows, macOS and Linux, originally developed by Alias and currently owned and developed by Autodesk. It is used to create assets for interact ...
and
Pixar RenderMan
Pixar RenderMan (formerly PhotoRealistic RenderMan) is proprietary photorealistic 3D rendering software produced by Pixar Animation Studios. Pixar uses RenderMan to render their in-house 3D animated movie productions and it is also available as ...
(produced by the
Pixar Animation Studios
Pixar Animation Studios (commonly known as Pixar () and stylized as P I X A R) is an American computer animation studio known for its critically and commercially successful computer animated feature films. It is based in Emeryville, Californi ...
subsidiary of
Walt Disney Studios, which is another studio owned by
The Walt Disney Company
The Walt Disney Company, commonly known as Disney (), is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios complex in Burbank, California. Disney was originally founded on October ...
).
Before the official release of the film Karoprokat looked at the International Space Station by cosmonauts
Maxim Suraev and
Oleg Kotov
Oleg Valeriyevich Kotov (russian: Олег Валериевич Котов) was born on 27 October 1965 in Simferopol, Crimean oblast in the Ukrainian SSR. After a career as a physician assigned to the Soviet space program, he joined the Russian ...
, who positively characterized it from the point of view of space specificity . Also, the first spectators were their wives and children on Earth. with some scenes of the film have been shown for some time in the program “ Спокойной ночи, малыши!”, Because the transmission format does not allow showing it in full. The movie was premiered on television in
Russia 1
Russia-1 (russian: Россия-1) is a state-owned Russian television channel, first aired on 14 February 1956 as Programme Two in the Soviet Union. It was relaunched as RTR on 13 May 1991, and is known today as Russia-1. It is the flagship cha ...
" on May 2, 2011.
Home media
''Space Dogs'' (English Dub) was released on DVD, Blu-ray, Blu-ray 3D &
Digital Copy
A digital copy is a commercially distributed computer file containing a media product such as a film or music album. The term contrasts this computer file with the physical copy (typically a DVD, Blu-ray, Blu-ray 3D, or Ultra HD Blu-ray disc) with ...
on 8 June 2012.
Reception
Sandie Angulo Chen of
Common Sense Media
Common Sense Media (CSM) is an organization that reviews and provides ratings for media and technology with the goal of providing information on their suitability for children. gave it 3 out of 5 stars.
Soundtrack
Sequels
A sequel ''Space Dogs: Moon Adventures'' was released in Russia in 2014 and it was dubbed in English and released the United States on 26 August 2016.
Mike Disa
Michael Disa (born February 14, 1965) is an American film director, screenwriter, and animator. He began working as an animator at Disney in the mid-1990s, where he was involved with several films up until the late-2000s. During this time, he also ...
was the director on the Americanized version. In 2020, the third sequel to the ''Space Dogs'' series, ''
Space Dogs: Return to Earth'' released in Russia on 24 September 2020. The film marks the establishment of the ''Space Dogs'' trilogy. Despite the release date being rescheduled due to unprecedented global events, the release date for ''Belka and Strelka: Caribbean Mystery'' (Russian title) coincided just 1 month after the 60th anniversary of the historic flight into space by the famous Soviet dogs Belka and Strelka and was one of the first major releases of Russian cinema industry.
See also
*
History of Russian animation The history of Russian animation is the visual art form produced by Russian animation makers. As most of Russia's production of animation for cinema and television were created during Soviet times, it may also be referred to some extent as the histo ...
*
List of animated feature films of 2010
A list of animated feature films first released in 2010.
Highest-grossing films
The top ten animated films by worldwide gross in 2010 were:
''Toy Story 3'' became the first animated film to reach over $1 billion.
See also
* List of animate ...
* ''
Space Dogs: Return to Earth (2020)''
References
External links
*
*
* {{rotten-tomatoes, belka_i_strelka_zvezdnye_sobaki_2011
Russian and Soviet animated science fiction films
2010 films
2010 animated films
2010 3D films
3D animated films
2010 computer-animated films
2010s science fiction films
Russian children's fantasy films
Animals in space
Russian animated feature films
Animated films about dogs
Films about space programs
2010s children's adventure films
2010s children's animated films
Films set in 1960