Thursday, Feb. 20, 1986
University Daily Kansan
Campus/Area
---
7
Slapstick humor makes 'Gods' successful
By Grant W. Butler Staff writer
The Gods Must Be Crazy, directed by janie Miles: 3.30 p.m., 7 p.m., and 9 p.m.; Friday and Saturday in Woodruff Auditorium in the Kansas Union. Rated PG, 100 min./color.
In a time when most comedy movies rely on exploitation of the female body and off-color jokes about human biological functions, "The Gods Must Be Crazy" is a refreshing departure from comic norms of the 1980s, because it restores wholesome 'slapstick' comedy to the theater.
An empty bottle of Coke is thrown
from an airplane onto the plains of
the Kalahari desert.
Puzzled bushmen find the bottle, which they believe is a gift from the gods.
In the remote desert, the bottle has many uses. It can be used to grind food, prepare animal skins and to make music. It also becomes the object of greed to a people who have always had everything they've needed.
With his tribe in turmoll, Xi decides the object given to them from the heavens is intrinsically evil and
the gods must have been crazy to have put it on the earth. Xi, played by Nixau, an actual Kalahari bushman, leaves with the bottle to find the edge of the world, where he can throw the bottle back to the gods. The ! stands for the clicking noise used in the pronunciation.
The approach of "The Gods Must Be Crazy" at first is a spoof on the documentary. The examination of good and evil, however, turns quickly to comedy as Xi comes into contact with people from the so-called civilized world. He meets a microbiologist
who studies animal dung, a school teacher who has left the city only to find that life in the wild is just as complicated, and bumbling African guerrillas who find playing cards just as important as escaping after failed coup attempts.
The film, directed by Jamie Uys, has made more money than any other foreign film to play in the United States. The film's success can be attributed to the simple nature of comedy employed.
There is nothing that offends in this movie, but the humor is hard-hitting.
from the start. A jeep with no brakes that must maneuver hilly roads provides some of the best automobile schickts since the Keystone Cops were on the theater marquees. The clumsy microbiologist performs acrobatic idiocy in a manner reminiscent of Buster Keaton.
The comic timing in the film is masterful and each character is the manifestation of certain laughable human elements.
There are moments with technical gaffes, such as the phony looking gunfire and neon-red blood. But this
is no time of space avengers, who blast and explode their way through the galaxy, where million-dollar special effects are necessary for progression of the plot.
There film is predictable. It's evident from the start that the bottle eventually will be thrown away, the hero will end up with the heroine and Xi will return to his people in the bush. It doesn't really matter, however, because the rehashing of slapstick comedy techniques seems brand new.
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