The gods must be crazy (1980)

This film has been my choice for film night for ages, but tonight was the night that we finally watched it. I was concerned that it was going to feel dated, especially given that it is a south african film from the apartheid era, but it was fairly tasteful. There was clear evidence of the noble savage trope, the african-country-in-civil-war trope, and the like, but the humour avoided laughing at the majority of the characters. Compared to something like Borat, which i was kind of expecting it to be like, it was really nice. In fact a lot of the humour came from laughing at the so-called civilised people for all of their silly rules.

One thing i was not expecting was for so much of the humour to be slapstick. And then i wasn’t expecting for the slapstick to be so well done. A lot of slapstick can feel cheap, or get old fast, but the variety of characters and locations meant that there was a lot of opportunity for extended slapstick scenes. The director was clearly passionate about silent films, because many sequences seemed like they could have been taken straight out of a film from a hundred years ago.

The only downside was that the romantic ending seemed to come out of absolutely nowhere. I don’t think it was necessary, it just kind of confused things.

Anyway, i’m glad we finally watched this film. It was a lot of fun.