Po tamburi (2021) User Reviews

Unforgettable time you will regret

[dufipl · 2/10 · 22 July 2021]

I had an opportunity to watch this movie on its world premiere at Pula Film Festival in Croatia. I have to add that local audience was having good time watching this movie and maybe it's just hard to understand for foreign viewers.

Although, it's trailer was weird but appealing for me. For the first 30 minutes of movie I still thought something will happen and this "comedy" will start to be funny. Suddenly not and with time passing it was just getting more boring and after an hour or so I was counting time left to the end. I can't criticise actors or recording. I just think that script/main plot was very poor and it was impossible to get more from it. I can't recommend but if you like Croatian movies, you might try it out.

A movie that's trying to be a parody, but utterly fails to do so

[matijaibsic · 2/10 · 10 January 2022]

Let me preface this by saying that I am from Croatia and that I was genuinely excited to see this movie. I love jokes specific to this region and I expected a lot of laughter.

I was severely disappointed. The beginning of the movie showed some promise, but after about 20 minutes in I started losing interest. At the end of the movie, I didn't regret watching it because I now know what kind of movies to avoid. I don't mind the movie being a parody about people from Slavonija (and others), but if you're making a parody at least make a good one.

I was flabbergasted by what the movie amounted to in the end. There were scenes that just didn't make sense, like the crowd cheering "Svi ostali" or something similar. It's an attempt at trying to be funny, but there's a difference between trying to be funny and actually being funny. Also, the stealing of the "zlatni kulen" award happened too fast and it wasn't well developed in my opinion. I think the director tried to combine too many elements and did so incoherently: there were scenes where the members of the Aveti Ravnice band were chased by a tractor and heavy metal music was blaring in the background. That particular scene could have used better sound editing for sure, but that scene just didn't fit into the overall picture of the movie. There was also a scene where one of the other bands comes to the guy driving the tractor and says "Oces da ti razbijem picku?" and then proceeds to punch his wife. This joke may sound funny here in this review, but is absolutely not funny in the movie. The fight scenes were completely unnecessary, in my opinion, as well as the scene with the hunters from Italy. Mixing of religious elements near the end didn't help as well. Full disclosure: I am a Christian and a Slavonian and I don't mind being made fun of, but if you're going to make fun of me at least do it properly. The actors were surprisingly good, given that they had to follow such a terrible script.

Overall, there were a few good jokes both on the Slavonian and the gypsy front, so this movie gets a 2/10 rating. I think it will only be funny to people who have a dry sense of humor combined with a certain level of snobbism that always goes hand in hand with dry humor.

I am not trying to bash the director in any way; maybe his other movies are great. I just think that before you try to make a parody of a certain group of people you should get to know them, or at least have someone from that group of people on the movie set so that you can make fun of the group authentically. It seems like the director sat in an ivory tower for this movie and tried to make a parody based on common stereotypes, but even if this was the case this movie still doesn't deliver because it looks like a movie with random elements all over the place, some of which I covered in the 3rd paragraph of this review.

I suggest that the director descends from his ivory tower the next time he is making a parody, spends some time with the locals so he can make fun of them better, doesn't try to mix so many random elements and most certainly improves his dry sense of humor. You underdelivered on this one, Stanislave. Don't let it happen again.

Shamefully missed opportunity...

[arminio · 3/10 · 3 June 2022]

OK - I am from Slavonia - part of Croatia which this movie wanted to parody and make fun - and based on all the hype that was made at the time of production of this movie, I really expected it will deliver a funny parody of events, customs, music from that part of my country...

But what I watched was lame, crappy so-called "action comedy" that truly and entirely missed the point.

See, there are so many "stereotypes" about Slavonia which you can successfully and intelligently make fun of, but this a-kind-of-a remake of Walter Hill's classic "The Warriors" made in Croatian/Slavonian way, was pretty bad and occasionally even dull and boring.

I must say that first 30 minutes are pretty good, but then everything falls apart in lousy (over)acting, bad uninspired directing, weak action scenes and with very lame, non-funny and out-of-place jokes.

Some fight scenes are so badly done with completely wrong choice of fight choreography and soundtrack, that you really need to see it to believe it.

Final Warriors-like "come out to play" paraphrase was a nice idea - but also messed up totally...

I am really, really disappointed. There are so many missed opportunities to make a really good parody... So instead watching movie, just watch trailer - it is much better than entire movie.

I just hope maybe someone will make a decent remake of this remake :)

If you can recognise the font on the movie poster, you'll know what to expect

[rserticgeog · 9/10 · 24 July 2021]

As I big fan of The Warriors, movie poster for premiere on Pula Film Festival instantly caught my attention. What also caught my attention is significant rating drop in past two days which means that audience in Pula has their standards high up.

There are two things to point out in the beginning which came from observing remarks of other people watching this movie. First one is that there are plenty of references that might be really difficult to understand to the viewers from countries other than Croatia and its neighbors. Second one, presence of Branko Uvodic attracted some of the older audience probably thinking it would be some easy going music show. Well, it's not. And they didn't hide their displeasure on violence and swear words.

Plot is rather straightforward and faithfully follows one of The Warriors. There are many references there for other movies that influenced the director and there's an outstanding amount of details packed in every scene. Acting is extraordinary, given the fact that many of actors are still "green". As music is a center piece of the movie, it is well adapted into it, combining tamburica arrangements with hard rock in a subtle manner that really blends into the movie.

Croatian movies have been dominated for a long time with dull dramas which have almost identical motifs, seeing such movie was one refreshing experience. It has a new fun approach on a classic movie, it's fun, dynamic, somewhat trashy and delightful.