The Gods Must Be Crazy

This is billed as "an epic comedy of absurd proportions" and that's exactly what it is. The opening section, which details the life of the Bushmen, is utterly charming, and the rest of the picture has this incredible momentum which eventually just bowls you over with its good spirits. You keep wondering how the South African director Jamie Uys is going to tie together his incredibly disparate plot elements: the wandering bushman with the Coca-Cola bottle, the nice-guy microbiologist doing research in Africa, the new schoolmistress in a native village, and a band of errant revolutionaries. Sure enough though, he does, in marvelous assured style. Even the slapstick keeps coming at you so relentlessly that eventually you just have to laugh. The film has an unpolished, almost amateurish style, but that adds to its charm. After about two hours, it decides to stop, but it could have gone on forever, with the schtick they set up. All the loose ends are tied up, and true love triumphs. Hurray. Like someone said, Woody Allen meets Daktari. Incidentally, I think this picture has broken all sorts of attendance records in the theater it is in, or something like that.