The Gods Must Be Crazy I & Ii

Comedy, Adventure, Family, Documentary

N!Xau	Xixo
Sandra Prinsloo	Kate Thompson
Lena Farugia	Dr. Ann Taylor
Hans Strydom	Dr. Stephen Marshall
Marius Weyers	Andrew Steyn
Louw Verwey	Sam Boga
Michael Thys	Mpudi
Nic De Jager	Jack Hind
Brian O'Shaughnessy	Mr. Thompson
Vera Blacker	Mrs. Thompson
Ken Gampu
Paddy O'Byrne

Director	Jamie Uys
Producer	Jamie Uys
Writer	Jamie Uys

South African director Jamie Uys caught lightning in a bottle with The Gods Must Be Crazy--a Coke bottle, to be specific. This slaphappy collection of goofy pratfalls and culture-clash gags became an enormous international smash, and made a sort of star out of the Bushman selected to play the central role, the completely ingratiating N!Xau. He plays a man, unaware of white culture, who finds a Coca-Cola bottle in the Kalahari (dropped by a passing pilot) and promptly has his life turned around by this mystical object. The movie looks slipshod and even amateurish at times, yet its attitude is so bubbly it's hard to resist. Proving that physical comedy remains a true international language, millions of moviegoers around the world drank it up.

The Gods Must Be Crazy II (1989) returns N!Xau to the bizarre world of the white man, this time in a slicker plot (and a with a bigger budget) that, perhaps predictably, yields fewer real belly laughs than the first time around. Director Jamie Uys sticks to his cherished notions that tribesmen are wiser than civilized people, and that fast-motion comedy is inherently funny. The storyline begins with N!Xau's innocent Bushman searching for his lost children; he then gets sidetracked by subplots. The humor is basic, but in best silent-movie tradition Uys prepares his set-pieces with elaborate care, and he understands the value of the long-delayed pay-off. --Robert Horton