It’s only been about a year-and-a-half since I wrote a brief review of The Gods Must Be Crazy (http://www.mountainx.com/movies/review/gods_must_be_crazy), the freakish hit film from 1980 about an African bushman (N!xau) whose life—and that of his people—is changed when he finds a Coke bottle that has been dropped out of an airplane. Though utilitarian at first, the bottle becomes a problem, because it’s something new to his tribe—an item to be fought over. As I said originally, it’s a pleasant little film, but I’ve yet to understand how or why it became so popular. All I can add to that now is that I don’t really understand why it’s being resurrected yet again. (It’s sufficiently common that it’s a little like calling a request line and asking to hear the Beethoven Fifth Symphony.) But it obviously has its admirers. It’s just a little too precious and slapsticky for me.
The Gods Must Be Crazy
Movie Information
The Hendersonville Film Society will show The Gods Must Be Crazy at 2 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 11, in the Smoky Mountain Theater at Lake Pointe Landing Retirement Community, 333 Thompson St., Hendersonville. (From Asheville, take I-26 to U.S. 64 West, turn right at the third light onto Thompson Street. Follow to the Lake Point Landing entrance and park in the lot on the left.)
| Score: | |
| Genre: | Comedy |
| Director: | Jamie Uys |
| Starring: | Marius Weyers, Sandra Prinsloo, N!xau, Louw Verwey |
| Rated: | PG |
Perhaps it is because everyone likes the little bushmen. Or perhaps it is because this film served as the hope and promise for scatological scientists everywhere for recruiting fresh young minds into the field.