Vladimir Petkevich's later films, like this one, seem to not get nearly the attention of his early ones (from the 1980s and 1990s), so I thought I'd partly correct this by subtitling one of them, as his filmography shows an interesting artistic progression. A rare example of an artist going the other way from arty to conventional. Petkevich repudiated his earlier sophisticated, dreamy, avant garde style and decided to make films that are more mainstream:

"I long ago forever gave up on arthouse films. Sorry, but arthouse is made for fools and critics. I have no desire to do it. When I make films for children, these family films, it is a chance to help someone."

Despite this, it's his earlier films that always get written about, when they are noticed at all. And for myself, too, it's the earlier films that I remember and love. His later films, like this one, tend to be well-made... but they feel like most of the sharp edges are smoothed over. For example, there's a part in this film where the old couple have gotten rich, and the old lady puts the hen that gave them their wealth in a gilded cage. It seems that this thoughtless act of cruelty (which was foreshadowed earlier when the old woman gave the hen only a small treat) should be a turning point in the story. Instead, it really doesn't change much. The hen seems a bit disappointed, but is made happy again when the cat brings the gramophone closer to her.

The end result is a film that is well-made and full of rich, little details, but inoffensive and not very memorable.

In his book "The Masters of Short-form Animation", Aleksey Surtayev has a chapter about Petkevich in which he makes the same point:

A sad paradoxical situation has arisen: having reoriented himself toward the mass audience, Vladimir Petkevich has failed to attract that very audience. The works of the Belarusian animator can be viewed at festivals and on the internet. Here is what the director says in an interview: "It is not commercially viable for cinemas to show our cartoons, and television is not interested in them either. We show them at festivals, win awards, but what's the point? The cartoons gather dust on the shelves and, in essence, become useless to anyone. At the same time, attempts to post the works on the internet are categorically suppressed. But I'm not against it at all, let the kids watch them somewhere... But in the end, it turns out that we are doing all this huge work just for the sake of ticking boxes."