Viewed on its own merits, it is perhaps a nice debut film, though certainly not as polished as Zyablikova's later films of the 1980s (and too much aimed at younger kids to the exclusion of adults, while the original book can be loved at any age). However... I watched this recently right after reading the book for the first time, and I found it to be an enormous disappointment. I enjoyed the book immensely. But here, too many changes seemed to be made simply for the purpose of shifting things around, and it seemed more like a pale imitation than a valid reinterpretation into a different medium. Which is unfortunate - I wanted to like this, but couldn't.

This series has only been published in Vietnam for about ten years now under the auspices of the Finnish embassy. It is quite popular among Saigonese young people.