While visiting the old pub Andrey suddenly gets an opportunity to try to live somebody's else life. Available for rent is a life of famous chef and restaurants owner...
A shell-shocked Afghanistan war hero named Ivan Skryabin (Mikhail Skryabin) spends his days stoking the fire in a giant coal furnace. When he isn’t tending the flames, he keeps busy with other activities. He works on a historical novel. His adult daughter Sasha (Aida Tumutova) comes to visit. Local kids come to gaze at the flames. Gangsters, including a former Army sergeant (Aleksandr Mosin) and a sniper known as Bison (Yuri Matveyev), drop by to add special kindling to the fire.
Nikolai (played by Sergei Dontsov) has been fired from his job as a music teacher and has to live in the gym until he finds a place to stay. Finally, he gets a communal room in the apartment of Gorokhov (Victor Mikhalkov). The room's previous inhabitant, an old lady, has died a year ago, and yet her cat, Maxi, is still in the locked room, healthy and fat. Soon, Nikolai and his neighbours discover the mystery: there is a window to Paris in the room. That's when the comedy begins - will the Russians be able to cope with the temptation to profit from the discovery?
A small provincial town is home to two rival teenage gangs, one devoted to loose living and punk music and the other a collection of narrow-minded bodybuilders obsessed with order and convinced of their own moral rectitude. However, this cosy state of affairs is upset by the arrival of two strangers dressed like Pushkin, the famous early 19th century Russian poet, who proceed to found their own organisation, dedicated ostensibly to the memory of the great writer and the "salvation of Russia". Gradually, they begin to assume control of the town...