BABU RIBA HEY Movie Review

Four middle-aged men gather in Belgrade in the 1980s for the funeral of a girl they all loved as youngsters. In flashback, we get glimpses of the fun they had in the 1950s, saturated with American rock and roll, American movies, and American cigarettes. Far from American, however, was their local Communist Youth Group leader, who's the villain of the piece on both a personal and political level. The four boys comprised a rowing team, with the girl their coxswain, and the metaphorical implications of that image—with the foursome gliding through history to the rhythm of their now-dead muse—can be seen as typical of the film. It's not a subtle movie, nor is it a bad one, yet the specificity of time and place that it describes make it a film that doesn't travel all that well. You had to be there.

NEXT STOP … Twist & Shout, Time Stands Still, American Graffiti

1988 (R) 109m/C YU Gala Videnovic, Nebojsa Bakocevic, Dragan Bjelogric, Marko Todorovic, Goran Radakovic, Relja Basic, Milos Zutic; D:Jovan Acin; W:Jovan Acin. VHS, LV ORI