I don't dislike this movie because it's exploitative or demeaning, as many anthropologists claim. While portrayal of the Bushmen life is a bit unfair in my opinion, I am not an anthropologist, nor am I majoring in anthropology. My feelings have nothing to do with that.
I dislike it because "guy with funny car" and "guy who falls over a lot" is NOT funny, but the film seems to think it is to the point where it repeats the same slapstick gags over and over again.
god this movie sucked. this movie sucked in ways i haven't seen movies suck in a long, long time. sucky, sucky suck.
shareYou're an English major. I can tell.
shareThis film is one of the few films that easily could have been a silent film and when this occurs youve got an example of true cinema. yes it does tend to gravitate to overt slapstick and probably couldve lost 15 to 20 minutes and been a little more cohesive and a tidier original and small example of a good movie.
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Bearing in mind this movie is TWENTY-FIVE years old, you can't compare the humour to what you see in movies nowadays. That's like comparing the SFX in Barbarella to those in Spielberg's War of the Worlds. Try to keep an appropriate frame of reference when watching old movies.
"Give me but one firm place on which to stand and I shall move the Earth." - ARCHIMEDES
the BEST part of the entire movie is when they guy throws the coke bottle into the air and it lands on his daughter, and when a kid whacks another kid with it on the head..hahahha we watched it in school and played that part over and over..its funny *beep*
Joaquinian
The Gods Must Be Crazy is clearly one of the best films in the last 30 years!
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This movie's objective is not just to entertain us. There is a lot of meaning locked away in the elements like slapstick humor which are included. Unfortunately, that information is lost if the audience isn't prepared to get more out of a film than a couple hours of goofiness. If that's what you would prefer, find whatever summer comedy hollywood has cooked up recently. I'm sure you'll find it delightfully free of subtext.
shareGood post greenoak, I agree with you. Btw, even if the movie were judged only for its comedy - I give it 10/10 for its originality. Apart from the comedy it is still a brilliant movie - it makes you think like no other movie makes you think.
shareI agree. I liked how the white characters, who were thought to be Gods, or whatever, were actually sillier, goofier, and much less composed than the Bushmen.
"What happened to us, Kodos?"
"Quiet, you."
Great, GREAT movie. It has it all, lightening in a (pardon the pun)- bottle.
shareI wish IMDB would add an option where you could like or give a thumbs up to a comment. You'd get my vote.
Snakes....I hate snakes
After all, Hollywood has done so very, very much to expand the boundaries of humour in the past 25 years. You are talking about blood, bile, and phlegm, right?
God, I can't wait to see what humour-stretching scenes they come up with in Cheaper by the Dozen III. No wonder people in the Bible Belt hear voices telling them to kill all their children.
I did like the humour in Spielberg's War of the Worlds, though. I mean when all those people in that metal cage took that fall from about 40 feet up, and nobody walked away with so much as a scratch, I needed serious medication to control my laughter. Hy-freakin-sterical.
You were being facetious about not being able to compare the humor of today with that of 25 years ago, I hope?
Hi there juan-miller:
Your post says: After all, Hollywood has done so very, very much to expand the boundaries of humour in the past 25 years. You are talking about blood, bile, and phlegm, right?
God, I can't wait to see what humour-stretching scenes they come up with in Cheaper by the Dozen III. No wonder people in the Bible Belt hear voices telling them to kill all their children.
I did like the humour in Spielberg's War of the Worlds, though. I mean when all those people in that metal cage took that fall from about 40 feet up, and nobody walked away with so much as a scratch, I needed serious medication to control my laughter. Hy-freakin-sterical.
You were being facetious about not being able to compare the humor of today with that of 25 years ago, I hope?
My post, which was directed at the original poster who did not find the humour in the man clumsily falling out of his car regulary, says: Bearing in mind this movie is TWENTY-FIVE years old, you can't compare the humour to what you see in movies nowadays. That's like comparing the SFX in Barbarella to those in Spielberg's War of the Worlds. Try to keep an appropriate frame of reference when watching old movies.
I did not at any point say that War of the Worlds was comical in anyway. I simply used an analogy comparing SFX in WotW to the SFX in Barbarella, just so the original poster could understand why humour from the 80s might not appeal to him. I personally try to watch movies as if I am seeing them back in the period that they were originally produced, to get a better appreciation of the films themselves. It's not fair for us to compare our idea humour based on present day movies, to humuor that was made 25 years ago. That's all.
"Give me but one firm place on which to stand and I shall move the Earth." - ARCHIMEDES
Bearing in mind this movie is TWENTY-FIVE years oldOMG!!! That's, like, so old!!! Did they even have humour way back then?? Anthropologists have suggested that those were the days when man made the earliest forms of the Mitsubishi Starion!!!! That was soooo long ago!!!
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Have you ever even seen a Buster Keaton movie?No. Why? share
OK, I haven't seen this movie, but I'm not sure that humour has a "frame of reference" in the same way that effects do. I was gonna use Some Like it Hot as an example, but since I haven't seen that yet either, I'll take Airplane! instead... Released in the same year as "Gods", yet considered a comedy classic by most.
I'm not attempting to compare the types of humour, just saying that in the movies I don't think great comedy deteriorates because it's "old". There are plenty of older comedies that the majority like, so you can't really use that as an excuse...
I'm gonna take this itty-bitty site by storm... I'm just gettin' warm.
i dont think its the 'oldness' of the humour that puts people off this film, more the rather unfortunate 'dated' music and sped up effects of the slapstick scenes, i honestly thought the slapstick scenes were quite funny but that music really pissed me off.
As for the rest of the film i thought there were some great lines and an interstingly bizarre and unique storyline. I never have and probably never will watch another film like this! Very flawed but a great film nevertheless.
I am an currently getting my BA in anthropology from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. I have seen this film. I have seen documentary footage of what ACTUALLY happened as well. I can tell you one thing...this is a terrible film. The director went into the kalahari, paid these people the equivalent of $3.00 each to do this film, and exploited the hell out of them. The San (not, "bushmen," as they're often referred) were not entirely aware of what was going on with this filming business. They went along for the money. This was a terrible scheme to take advantage of a people who were vulnerable to such practices. The filmmakers could have just as easily cast black European actors in these roles and shot it somewhere else. It would have been more expensive, yes, but what is the true cost of such a film?
shareIMDb Mini biography:
"N!xau, a San from the Kalahari Desert, was discovered by director Jamie Uys and cast in the lead role in the 1980 movie The Gods Must Be Crazy (1980). He received only a few hundred dollars for his work in that film, but was astute enough to negotiate for over half a million for his appearance in the sequel, The Gods Must Be Crazy II (1989)."
There are two sides to every story...
And by the way, he was paid $300, not $3, and back in 1980 that was quite a hefty sum.
There are three kinds of people in the world: Those who can do maths, and those who can't.
And by the way, he was paid $300, not $3, and back in 1980 that was quite a hefty sum.
Bull $300 in 1980 money is the equivalent to about $780 today or about 1/10th the cost a _single_ can of 35mm color negative film the movie was shot on. If they only paid that much to the one staring in it I am apt to believe the parent on payment to the rest of them.
As I said above, this is a movie from SA, so it's a little difficult to compare the $ value because of the way the Rand and dollar have changed in currency and inflation since then. I'd bet the film was cheaper stuff bought from Hong Kong or somewhere.
That being said, N!xau probably was underpaid - but the only way to get a real idea would be to check what Marius Weyers and the other actors got paid. But I guarantee you it would not have been $1000s and $1000s. My ballpark guess would be maybe $5000 for Weyers, although he was an established actor at the time (at a local level), while N!xau was an unknown.
I gotta say I disagree with you in the idea that this guy was "exploited". What exactly did they (the San) lose in this encounter? Seems to me a little more than some time, unless you're one of those goofy romantics that like to imagine that somehow cultures (particularly "primitive" ones) are more or less "pure" and "untouched." The movie didn't really cast them negatively, if probably not that accurately, what with their "the bushmen have no word for evil" nonsense. I honestly don't think a significant portion of the West has suddenly decided to base its entire outlook on a culture from an odd little foreign comedy from 1980. Heck, the movie is a slapstick! Do you think people decided that factories must be just like they're depicted in "Modern Times" when that was first screened?
Also, I do think it would probably have been unreasonably expensive for them to hire black European (or American, for that matter) actors. For one thing, if you didn't notice, it's a Botswanan film. I don't think the Botswanan film industry is exactly a massive corporate life-leeching machine. With that in mind, does it make more sense to inquire abroad for actors willing to imitate San? And if you're in any way worried about authentic portrayal of the San, doesn't it make more sense to have an actual San than any old Joe with that conforms closely enough to whatever the popular imagination believes to be an "African Savage"? Even if they did that, don't you think the Botswanan audience, who the film was made for, would see right through it?
No, this is a South African film. Jamie Uys - South African. Marius Weyers - South African. etc. etc. It may have been partly shot in Botswana, I don't know, but it was made for and financed by SA.
Why on earth would anyone want to hire black Americans or Europeans and take them to Africa? Hello? Like casting the next Hong Kong kung fu movie in SF Chinatown and flying everyone over.
BTW South African humour tends to be a bit slapstick, even in this day, and gets on my nerves sometimes. (This is a fantastic movie, though.)
I am also considering majoring in Anthropology, and I feel like I need to make some sort of reply to this.
Regarding names: "San" and "Bushmen" are both legit and iffy terms at the same time (well, my professor doesn't like the term "San," anyway...I can't really remember what it means, though). They have many, many names, and a lot of them either refer to a language group (!Kung, !Kung-san), or are derogatory in nature (San, Basarwa [which means "people without cattle"], Bushmen [from the Dutch "Bossiesman," meaning "bandit"], etc.). The problem with naming a group according to their language is that it's often too big a classification; for instance, you wouldn't call an American an "English" person. The problem with the derogatory terms is that they're, well, derogatory. There are some Bushmen who are starting to like the name "Bushmen," however, because it implies that they are rejecting society and living on their own terms (even though they've become heavily marginalized over the years and put onto reservations or exploited for tourism purposes). Personally, I like the term Ju'/hoansi (pronounced Joo-twah-see), since it means "the true people," or something along those lines.
Just a bit of clarification was needed, I thought, since this is the exact thing we're now talking about in my Issues in Anthropology class. The Bushmen are not easily named or classified, therefore, any of the terms people call them can be equally as legitimate, or equally as problematic. When it comes to naming them, there's really no "correct" answer. So, while you may be right, it's a little more complicated than that.
See, this is why I'm not going into cultural anthropology. Gimme good ol' forensics instead. Then you get to talk about creepy fun stuff like cannibalism. ^_^
"Oh, sugar...you just gone and done the dumbest thing in your whole life..."
or are derogatory in nature (San, Basarwa [which means "people without cattle"]
The problem with the derogatory terms is that they're, well, derogatory.
You've obviously only started your degree in anthropology because you don't know that black people look different to the San or Bushmen (as they themselves like to be called in SA). I doubt that there were any Bushmen/San living in Europe as I know they only had one Representative in the SWA/Namibian government at that time.
Besides $3 in those days in South Africa was a significant amount of money and probably more than extras get paid in current Hollywood films, while Jamie Uys had a small budget in the first place. At least they got $3 out of the deal and now millions of people around the world know of a group of people in Southern Africa called the San.
ehm.. you DO know this isn't a serious movie, or don't you ?
shareApparently, they don't know. And they wouldn't like "Napoleon Dynamite", either. I confess-I'm a sucker for anti-Hollywood movies. I loved the rhino stamping out fires. I thought that was hilarious. My favorite character was the Range Rover with a mind of its own.
shareWrong, WRONG assessment. Good, GOOD movie.
When this film was new, I lived in Coconut Grove, Florida. It played at the Coconut Grove Cinema for months. What was wrong with us, that we didn't know it was Bad, BAD?
This is an excellent film, one of my all-time favorites.
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I love this movie and watched it years ago in Hawaii. I just bought it the other day. The slapstick gags as you deem them are hilarious as the guy falling around is. He's so incredibly goofy he's funny. That's the point. You are missing the whole point. It's not suppose to be serious.
shareI love slapstick and silly physical gags. I saw this movie at the theater about 10 times and took everybody I could drag along there with me.
It's like how the French adored Jerry Lewis. I think it takes a certain visual or spatial appreciation to like slapstick, which the French certainly have.
Oh well, PhilG, I thought it was a good movie, and even thought the guy with the car that fell down alot was funny in a deadpan sort of way. I guess to each his own.
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Responding to original poster:
I don't disagree that the slapstick is unfunny.
But think about an international movie that isn't based on special effects and explosions - it's hard for a hit to come to mind. Probably this had broad-based appeal for many countries because a)families could watch it b)there were in-jokes for adults c)the slapstick didn't require any translation - long segments of sight gags could easily be understood in any language d)there's material for almost every political bent and faction to supposed this movie is 'on their side'.
It's hard to think of another non-Hollywood movie (non-special F/X) that has ever or could have ever hit this big.
Well, I saw this movie when I was a pre-teen and I loved it. As did everyone else who saw it with me. I don't know how I'd think about it know but it's still a great movie in my mind :)
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