Foolish Years

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Foolish Years (Serbian: Lude godine) is a popular Serbian (Yugoslav) film series directed over ten installments by Zoran Čalić between 1977 and 1992. By its latter part, the series became widely known informally as Žikina dinastija, which is the title of the seventh movie.

The series began with the 1978 film Lude godine, which was supposed to be a serious drama addressing the issues of unprotected sex and teen pregnancy. However, some of the supporting characters - most notably Živorad "Žika" Pavlović (played by Dragomir Bojanić Gidra) and Milan Todorović (played by Marko Todorović) - proved to have great comic potential. This was exploited in the nine subsequent films as all of them revolved around the pair of inlaws - wacky Žika and reserved, straightlaced Milan.

Nearly every single film in the series was widely lambasted by critics. Most disliked it for what they saw to be poor directorial choices and crude folksy humour exploiting rural vs. urban stereotypes, best embodied in the characters of Žika and Milan.

However, the films were enormously popular with general audiences, not only in Yugoslavia, but also in the former Eastern Bloc countries. One example of such prominence was actress Rialda Kadrić who received the invitation to Moscow Film Festival, an honour usually reserved for most renowned artists or international film stars.

Despite its low-brow reputation, the series proved to be a valuable training ground and career springboard for many acting talents and future stars of Serbian (and former Yugoslav) cinema like Sonja Savić, Zoran Cvijanović, Nikola Kojo, Gala Videnović, Branko Đurić, etc.

The informal name of the series parodied American TV soap opera Dynasty, which was enormously popular throughout Yugoslavia in the mid-1980s.

The films in the series are:

Lude godine (1977) in English: Wacky Years
Došlo doba da se ljubav proba a.k.a. Lude godine II (1980) in English The Time for Love has Come a.k.a. Wacky Years II
Ljubi, ljubi, al' glavu ne gubi (1981) in English: Love, but Don't Lose Your Head
Kakav deda takav unuk (1983) in English: Like Grandpa, Like Grandson
Idi mi, dođi mi (1983) in English: Come and Go
Šta se zgodi kad se ljubav rodi (1984) in English: What Happens When Love Comes to Town
Žikina dinastija (1985) in English: Žika's Dynasty
Druga Žikina dinastija (1986) in English: Second Žika's Dynasty
Sulude godine (1988) in English: Weird Years
Žikina ženidba (1992) in English: Žika's Wedding