“Coincidentally, we see, in a short span of time, a film with ‘once upon a time,’ but not with ‘creatures of fantasy,’ but of… laughter. Thus, the Emperor from ‘The Secret of the Secret Weapon’ is an emperor, the Dragon is a dragon, etc., but as much as they are comical, they seem to need a helping hand. Victor Rebengiuc’s sovereign gets tangled up in everything, from clothes and wigs to theory and practice, from waging war to educating and marrying off the Beauty (his daughter), from the faith of his subjects to the respect of his neighbors. A kind of Aguirre, the wrath of the gods, in a parodic version, where madness becomes debility. Not without purpose, however. Touchingly straight — obviously, beyond laughter — is Mircea Diaconu, truly the most dragonish dragon, because he suffers ‘like a dog in love.’ Frankenstein with fangs on hand and arias sung on the cello, inventive but born without luck, insolent or obedient, as the situation requires, malevolent without conviction and remaining at the tail of the cart out of vocation, the Dragon seems in an incessant… recycling, hoping to achieve some success. Indeed, this is the great lesson offered by the so-called cousin and ‘terror,’ the genius of evil, disguised in all sorts of costumes, from the ‘spirit of the place’ (and a spirit cannot be dressed to the throat!) to the leather jacket with spikes, Carmen Galin being irresistibly charming in all her roles. She is effective, seductive, deceitful, disguises herself, promises, strikes, never resting for a moment, and, as terrifying as she wants to be, Carmen Galin, perhaps, has never been more beautiful than now, in that crazy… crazy world, overwhelmed by characters, but also by actors in love with that kind of madness called play.”

“Apparently, the director-screenwriter plays, inventing a fairy-tale world with dragons and handsome youths, good fairies and witches, emperors and Ilene Cosânziene (whose meaning he changes more than once), engaging all characters in a tremendous farce, in a dizzying burlesque carousel, but the film is by no means a game; the director speaks many truths, combats human stupidity, absurdity, abnormality, nonsense, aberration, in the context of a meaningful plot, with a pronounced anti-war and anti-totalitarian message, this in the midst of the year… 1989.”