The utopian rocker, whose manner and music promise a blissful, dreamy union of the races and the sexes, doesn`t need a story line to communicate his meanings, which remain by pop standards unusually complex and considered.

Musically, it's a matter of opinion, but from the sparse funk of the title tune to the bebop blow-out around Charlie Parker's Now's the Time, this guiltless grooving in Eden fizzes with brilliantly choreographed wit and invention.

As a concert film, judged from the music, Sign O' the Times is near the top. As a movie -- carrying inside it the embryo of other movies -- it's not fully satisfying.