I was delighted the other day when, at a bargain display near the grocery store checkout, I spotted DVDs of “The Gods Must Be Crazy,” a sublimely funny movie I haven’t seen in many, many years. I snatched one up for $9.99, which is probably about $2 more than the original shooting budget.
I have to explain this movie for those of you who aren’t familiar with it. It was shot by a South African filmmaker, Jamie Uys, and released about 1980. It was very low-budget and never intended for international release, but it just took off somehow. At one point, it actually held the title of the most successful foreign film released in the U.S.
There are two or three interlocking stories, which all merge at the climax. I’ll get to the most famous one in just a moment. One of the other story threads is about a scientist (Marius Weyers), working in remote bush country, whose job is literally studying animal droppings. In reality, he’s a great guy, but he has very little experience with women, and he’s asked to go pick up a former journalist (Sandra Prinsloo) who has decided to give up the pressures of city life for a job teaching at a mission school in the bush. The scientist is attracted to the teacher, which makes him very, very nervous, and within minutes, he manages to give her the false impression that he’s a klutz, a moron and possibly a pervert.
Meanwhile, there’s a subplot about a military coup being planned by a cruel but inept guerilla group.
But the storyline everyone remembers is about a bushman named Xi, played by a real-life bushman named N!xau. In the first few minutes of the movie, we see the daily life of Xi and his tribe — who have no knowledge of the outside world — presented, with narration, like something you’d see on public television or the Discovery Channel. The narrator explains how possessions are shared, and how the bushmen live in harmony with nature and each other. When Xi fires a dart at an antelope to feed his family, he even apologizes to the antelope as it dies.
All of this domestic bliss is disturbed when a pilot in an open-cockpit biplane drops an old-fashioned glass Coca-Cola bottle. It’s the hardest, most amazing and useful thing that Xi and his friends have ever seen — but it’s also the only individual possession they’ve ever known, and that soon causes jealousy and conflict. Soon, Xi is given the task of throwing this evil gift from the crazy gods off the edge of the earth — which, as you may already have guessed, ends up sending him in the general direction of “civilization” as represented by the other two subplots.
The establishing portions of the movie are a little off-beat, but once the plot gets going you will be in stitches.
| Title | Content |
|---|
| Movie: | The Gods Must Be Crazy |
| Director: | Jamie Uys |
| Release Date: | 21 August 1981 (Norway) / Other Countries |
| Genre: | Action | Comedy |
| Tagline: | At last, a comedy everyone can laugh with! |
| User Rating: | 11,135 votes, average 6.9 out of 10 |
| Runtime: | 109 min |
| Awards: | 2 wins&1 nomination |
| Cast: | ... |
| Others: |
 Additional Details
Sound Mix, Aspect Ratio ... |
| Photos: | N/A |
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