The Gods Must Be Crazy
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Movie Reviews of The Gods Must Be Crazy
Movie Review: funny and thought-provoking
Summary: 5 Stars
A Coke bottle falls from an airplane and is found by Xi, a bushman, who takes it back to his family. They find it useful, but as it's the only one, they begin to fight over it, where they'd been only peaceful before. So Xi sets out to return the cursed object to the gods.
Meanwhile, a new teacher, Miss Thompson, arrives in Botswana, and is picked up by a scientist, Dr. Steyn, who's both enamoured and nervous around her. And there's a crazy revolutionary running around.
All three threads come together as Xi is on his quest.
There's humor--Dr. Steyn's difficulties with the land rover they call the anti-christ had me in stitches; action--mostly with the revolutionaries and the authorities trying to catch them; and romance--a very sweet romantic triangle with Miss Thompson caught between the earnest but tongue-tied Dr. Steyn and the slick bus-driving tour guide. The Gods Must Be Crazy is also part nature documentary on the Kalahari, and part sociological study.
The clash of cultures provides most of the humor and the serious moments--not only between primitive and civilized cultures, but also between men and women. And the narration prompts you to look at things, whether it's a familiar-seeming man making a fool of himself around a beautiful woman, or a bushman not understanding what was wrong with killing and eating a sheep, from the outside, as a scientific study perhaps. Which makes some things even funnier, and others more poignant or even profound.
It's a fairly low-budget, amateur-looking film, which only makes it feel more authentic and adds to its charm.
The unusual style took a bit of getting used to, but once they did, my husband and kids loved this as much as I did.
Movie Review: Charming, hilarious and romantic
Summary: 5 Stars
I first saw "The Gods Must be Crazy" back in 1988 when it had just been released. It remains, for me, one of the funniest, most charming and sweetly romantic movies of all time. It takes place in and around Botswana in Southern Africa. To an initial narrative slightly on the lines of The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Universe, which the movie resembles not one bit, otherwise, it launches off with an empty coca cola bottle being thrown out of a light plane flying over the Kalahari (which is located mainly in the central and south western part of Botswana). This object is found by a native Bushman who has never seen a coca coal bottle - or any bottle for that matter - takes this back to his tribe where it becomes almost a totem, so useful does it turn out to be from holding liquid to pounding roots for their water. They start to squabble over it and when someone gets struck by it the bushman who found it is sent to take away this evil thing which has brought strife to their peaceful existence and drop it off the edge of the world. Meanwhile in the neighbouring country, the most inept coup d'etat is taking place (excruciatingly funny in places), fails, and the ringleaders escape across the border. Meanwhile a new teacher, an escapee from the City, is coming to a village and is being met by a very shy botanist in a landrover without any brakes.... all three story lines combine cleverly and all ends happily and it concludes with one of the funniest and most romantic sequences in any movie that I have seen. Totally delightful.Movie Review: Story telling at its best, and a great documentary for balance
Summary: 5 Stars
Clearly TGMBC is a story telling masterpiece.... With the bonus of great slapstick comedy. !Xi is a modern-day Questing Hero, Luke Skywalker, Odysseus, on a journey of heart. The erzatz anthropology of the first 15 minutes is, in fact, accurate... if the film-maker were talking about 75 years ago.
The use of Journey to Nyae Nyae as balance gives the viewer a rounded picture of both the myth and the reality of native peoples of the southern part of Africa at the end of the 20th Century. This is a film I use in my college sociology classes to introduce 'culture' and the universality of humankind's need for collective living, and its interdependence.
In contrast to other reviewers, I find no racism in the film. In fact, the equality and dignity with which people of color are presented is astonishing, given that it was produced during the end of the Aparthied regieme in SA. There are goofy blacks (Frank) and goofy whites (Andrew). There are kindly whites and kindly blacks. There are ignorant, ethnocentric blacks and equally ignorant and ethnocentric whites. They are, all in all, just people... People whom our hero encounters on his Quest. And the upshot of the entire film is about People: personified in the little son who runs out to greet and embrace his father in the last 30 seconds of the film.
Movie Review: Send more Coke bottles?
Summary: 5 Stars
The import or message of this movie is so clear even a child can understand it: the ways of civilization are crazy. Living without possessiveness, without a dependence on objects, etc. is the way to go.
Ironically, the twenty-something child who made the documentary that accompanies this DVD did not get the message. What he saw is that these people need more Coke bottles! And he rushes in a couple of years ago bringing his contribution, a solution to all their problems. You guessed it. A laptop! And the solar panels to run it (environmentally sound, you see). And we see a family of Bushmen sitting around glum and anomic just as they do in the movie after the "evil thing" comes among them. They resemble American Indians living on a reservation: totally alienated, no longer believing in their old ways and yet unwilling to accept the white man's ways.
To cap it off, we see the star of the movie, N!Xau, sitting on the ground, staring into space, smoking a cigarette and dying of tuberculosis!
And still this kid does not get it. He prattles on, blissfully unaware of the irony of what he is saying (and doing).
For likeminded people, they have even established a website where you can send your Coke bottles.
Yes, indeed, the gods must be crazy.
Movie Review: Crazy, offbeat and quite wry humor
Summary: 5 Stars
This little movie is an undiscovered jewel, at least for those who have never seen it. The central figure is a gentle, simplistic Bushman who lives with his tribe in the Kalahari Desert. When a soft drink bottle is tossed out of an overflying light airplane, it lands near the Bushman tribe and causes no end of consternation, since the tribe has never seen anything like it. The Bushman's journey to "the edge of the world" to return the bottle to the gods, from whom he assumes it came, leads to all kinds of misadventures involving a socially awkward elephant researcher and a disaffected office worker-turned-schoolteacher.
Camera tricks, sight gags and well-timed slapstick make this movie a side-splitter. The researcher's efforts to win the affections of the school teacher are hilarious as he bumbles and stumbles through his overtures. The gentle innocence of the Bushman is captivating and charmingly funny throughout.
The movie also reflects somewhat the apartheid which existed in South Africa at the time, but at the same time it bridges that gap by depicting friendship and loyalty between the white researcher and the native man who is his assistant.
Overall, a very entertaining and humorous little movie, with nary a foul word uttered!