The Gods Must Be Crazy
The Gods Must Be Crazy is a 1980 comedy film written, produced, edited and directed by Jamie Uys. An international co-production of South Africa and Botswana, it is the first film in The Gods Must Be Crazy series. Set in Southern Africa, the film stars Namibian San farmer Nǃxau ǂToma as Xi, a hunter-gatherer of the Kalahari Desert whose tribe discovers a glass Coca-Cola bottle dropped from an aeroplane, and believe it to be a gift from their gods. When Xi sets out to return the bottle to the gods, his journey becomes intertwined with that of a biologist (Marius Weyers), a newly hired village school teacher (Sandra Prinsloo), and a band of guerrilla terrorists.
The Gods Must Be Crazy
Jamie Uys
Jamie Uys
- Nǃxau ǂToma
- Sandra Prinsloo
- Marius Weyers
- Nic de Jager
- Michael Thys
- Louw Verwey
- Ken Gampu
- Simon Sabela
Buster Reynolds
Robert Lewis
Stanford C. Allen
Jamie Uys
John Boshoff
Ster-Kinekor (South Africa)
20th Century Fox (United States)
- 10 September 1980 (South Africa)
109 minutes
South Africa
Botswana
English
Afrikaans
Juǀʼhoan
$5 million[1]
The Gods Must Be Crazy was released in South Africa on 10 September 1980 by Ster-Kinekor, and broke several box office records in the country, becoming the most financially successful South African film ever produced at the time.[2] The film was a commercial and critical success in most other countries, but took longer to find success in the United States, where it was eventually re-released in 1984 by 20th Century Fox,[1] with its original Afrikaans dialogue being dubbed into English. Despite its success, the film attracted criticism for its depiction of race and perceived ignorance of discrimination and apartheid in South Africa.[3]
In 1989, it was followed by a sequel The Gods Must Be Crazy II.
Plot[edit]
Xi and his San tribe[a] live happily in the Kalahari Desert, away from industrial civilization. One day, a glass Coca-Cola bottle is thrown out of an aeroplane by a pilot and falls to the ground unbroken. Initially, Xi's people assume the bottle to be a gift from their gods, just as they believe plants and animals are, and find many uses for it. Unlike other gifts, however, there is only one glass bottle, which causes unforeseen conflict within the tribe. As a result, Xi, wearing only a loincloth, decides to make a pilgrimage to the edge of the world and dispose of the divisive object.
Along the way, Xi encounters biologist Andrew Steyn, who is studying the manure of wildlife; Steyn's assistant and mechanic, M'pudi; Kate Thompson, a woman who quit her job as a journalist in Johannesburg to become a village school teacher; and eventually a band of guerrillas led by Sam Boga, who are being pursued by government troops after a failed assassination attempt. In a fictitious town called Biryani, northwest of Botswana, Boga's men kill three cabinet members and injure two others in an attempt on the president's life, sending the military in hot pursuit.
Steyn is tasked with bringing Thompson to the village where she will teach, but he is awkward and clumsy around her. Their Land Rover stalls while trying to ford a deep river; he hoists it out with a winch, but it continues lifting the vehicle to a very high treetop level while a forgetful Steyn is distracted extricating Thompson from a wait-a-bit tree. She more than once mistakes his attempts to evade wild animals, and putting out an evening campfire, as advances towards her. Eventually, a snobbish safari tour guide named Jack Hind arrives, and takes Thompson the rest of the way to the village.
One day, Xi happens upon a herd of goats, and shoots one with a tranquilizer arrow, planning to eat it. He is arrested and sentenced to jail. M'pudi, who once lived with the San and can speak the San language, is discontent with the verdict. He and Steyn arrange to hire Xi as a tracker for the remainder of his sentence in lieu of prison time, and teach Xi how to drive Steyn's Land Rover. Meanwhile, the guerrillas invade Thompson's school, taking her and the students as hostages as they make their escape to a neighbouring country.
Steyn, M'pudi and Xi, immersed in their fieldwork, find that they are along the terrorists' and children's path, and observe their movements with a telescope. They manage to immobilize six of the eight guerrillas using makeshift tranquilizer darts launched by Xi with a miniature bow, allowing Thompson and the children to confiscate the guerillas' firearms. Steyn and M'pudi apprehend the remaining two guerrillas by frightening one with a snake and by shooting at a tree above the other, causing latex to drip from the tree and irritate his skin. Jack Hind arrives and takes Thompson and the children away, taking credit for the rescue that Steyn, M'pudi and Xi had actually planned and executed.
Later, with Xi's term over, Steyn pays his wages and sends him on his way. Xi has never seen paper money (banknotes) before, and throws them on the ground. Steyn and M'pudi then drive from their camp to visit Thompson, where Steyn attempts to explain his tendency to be uncoordinated in her presence, but accidentally and repeatedly knocks over a number of objects in the process. Thompson finds his efforts endearing, and kisses Steyn.
Xi eventually arrives at God's Window, the top of a cliff with a solid layer of low-lying clouds obscuring the landscape below. Convinced that he has reached the edge of the world, he throws the bottle off the cliff, and returns to his family.
Release[edit]
Box office[edit]
The Gods Must Be Crazy was initially released in South Africa on 10 September 1980 by Ster-Kinekor Pictures.[2]Within its first four days of its release, the film broke box office records in every city in South Africa.[2][17] It became the highest-grossing film of 1982 in Japan, where it was released under the title Bushman.[18][19] Executive producer Boet Troskie sold the distribution rights to the film to 45 countries.
For its release in the United States, the original Afrikaans dialogue was dubbed into English, and voiceover work was provided for !Kung and Tswana lines.[17] The film initially received a limited American release through Jensen Farley Pictures in 1982, but performed poorly in at least half a dozen test cities.[1][20] However, the film would eventually find critical and commercial success when it was re-released by 20th Century Fox on 9 July 1984,[21] becoming the highest-grossing foreign film released in the United States at the time.[22] The film also played at the Music Hall Theater in Beverly Hills, California for at least eight months.[23]
Within its first four years of release, The Gods Must Be Crazy had grossed $90 million worldwide.[24] As of 2014, the film has grossed R 1.8 billion (approx. $200 million) worldwide, including over $60 million in the United States.[2]
Critical reception[edit]
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, The Gods Must Be Crazy has an approval rating of 85% based on 26 reviews, with an average rating of 7.4/10.[25] On Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, the film has a score of 73 out of 100 based on six reviews, indicating "generally favourable reviews".[26]
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film three stars out of four, concluding that "it might be easy to make a farce about screwball happenings in the desert, but it's a lot harder to create a funny interaction between nature and human nature. This movie's a nice little treasure".[27] Variety stated that the film's "main virtues are its striking, widescreen visuals of unusual locations, and the sheer educational value of its narration".[13]
In his review of the film for The New York Times, critic Vincent Canby wrote that "watching Jamie Uys's Gods Must Be Crazy, [...] one might suspect that there were no such things as apartheid or the Immorality Act or even South Africa".[28] Though he called the film "often genuinely, nonpolitically funny", he noted that "there's also something disturbing about the film", in that "we tend to feel that any South African work that doesn't actively condemn apartheid has the secondary effect of condoning it, if only through silence".[28]
Home media[edit]
In mid-November 1986, The Gods Must Be Crazy was released on VHS in the U.S. by CBS/Fox[29] on its Playhouse Video label.[30]
In 2004, The Gods Must Be Crazy was released on DVD by Sony Pictures Entertainment.[31][32] It was also released on DVD as a double feature with The Gods Must Be Crazy II.[33]
Legacy[edit]
Irish Spring soap had a 1989 commercial parodying the film.[36]
The video for the song "Take Me to Your Leader" by American rock band Incubus pays homage to the film.[37]