Alice’s Birthday is a 2009 Russian animated film directed by Sergey Seryogin and based on the novella of the same name by Kir Bulychev, starring Yaroslava Nikolaeva as Alice, Evgeny Stychkin as Rrrr, and Alexey Kolgan as Gromozeka, with a cameo appearance of Natalia Murashkevich as the captain.
Like in the novella, Alice gets a birthday gift from old family friend Gromozeka: she is to join his archaeological expedition to Koleida, a planet whose inhabitants mysteriously died out a hundred years ago. The expedition confirms Gromozeka’s theory – Koleida was killed by space plague, a super-contagious and, prior to the invention of a vaccine, 100%-deadly disease. Deciding to save Koleida, Gromozeka offers Alice to travel to the past and spray the space plague vaccine over the astronauts that brought the virus from space. The Koleidians were of the same height as Alice, so she’s the only one who can blend in if she goes to the past. However, at the last moment, Professor Rrrr, the expedition’s linguist who looks like a one-eyed kitten, says he will accompany her, disguised as a normal cat, and the two of them rush to the past, where the locals, unaware they are in immediate danger of extinction, aren’t eager to help them in the slightest.
The film contains examples of:
- Abandoned Playground: Alice visits the room of a child who fell victim to the plague. The toys are scattered on the floor, among them a mechanical robot which is still functioning, and the kid's picture is on the table. Before that, Alice mostly treats Koleida as an adventure ride for her birthday, but after seeing that room, the full tragedy of what has happened dawns on her.
- Adaptation Dye-Job: Alice’s hair is golden blond in the books, but here she is a Fiery Redhead.
- Adaptation Expansion: A lot of subplots were added to turn a short and fairly simple novella into an 80-minute movie.
- Adaptational Dumbass: The movie starts with Alice miserably failing her history exam. In the books, she is excellent at history, and Alice and Alicia confirms it’s her second favorite subject after biology.
- Adaptational Jerkass:
- Though Alice can be quite the Deadpan Snarker in the books, she is always nice to younger kids. Here, she rudely taunts Bolo, who has been nothing but helpful and friendly towards her.
- Rrrr is easily annoyed and often snaps at Alice, quite the contrast from his timid and polite self from the books.
- Canon Foreigner:
- Bolo, a mischievous five(ish)-year-old Koleidian, has no counterpart in the book.
- The mysterious illusionist doesn't appear in the book.
- Chekhov's Gunman: The child whose room Alice visits early in the movie? In the past, it’s he who comes to help her when all hope is lost.
- Hive Mind: When billions of space plague viruses get together, they become a single evil mind bent on destruction.
- I Owe You My Life: The stray cats are pretty mean towards Rrrr until he saves them from cat catchers. After that, they join him in helping Alice escape from prison.
- Incurable Cough of Death: Violent cough is one of the major symptoms of the space plague.
- Monochrome Past: Stepan's film of his trip to the dying Koleida is in sepia.
- Moth Menace: After Koleida dies out, the viruses of the space plague stay on the planet in the shape of large white moths.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Tolo, the Koleidian flight engineer, goes into space to fix the ship's antenna damaged by a minor meteorite strike. While doing so, he catches the space plague and becomes patient zero of the epidemic that wipes out the planet. Thankfully, in the new timeline, the catastrophic consequences of his actions are averted.
- Reptiles Are Abhorrent: When the viruses of the space plague get together, they take the shape of an enormous dinosaur.
- Related Differently in the Adaptation: The friendly old lady from the train is the flight engineer’s grandmother; in the book, she is his mother.
- Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Like in the novella, Alice and Rrrr go to the past to prevent the space plague from killing every living thing on Koleida.
