Forms of this review have appeared before here at Film Mafia, but this revised version accompanies its Australian theatrical release.
****1/2 (out of five)
Tickled, which opens on 18 August, is far too brilliant for me to say anything about it. It wouldn’t be fair, to audience member or filmmaker; this is one of those documentaries where the less you know, the better, becuase every single twist in the tale is surprising, and the best of them are head-spinning, jaw-dropping, and hysterical. Suffice to say that it’s a Pandora’s Box with results both funny and deeply disturbing.
New Zealand pop culture reporter David Farrier goes noodling about looking for his next fun, light, easy-going story, finds an audition notice for competitive endurance tickling, thinks “WTF??”, follows it up, and gets hit with hateful correspondence about his own sexuality of such mind-boggling nastiness that he simply has to go deep, enlisting his filmmaking buddy Dylan Reeve to join him. And that’s all in the first 300 or so seconds of the film. Things get weirder from there.
If the definition of a good film is one that keeps you wanting to know what happens next, Tickled is among the greatest ever made. You cannot look away. Don’t drink a batch of water, coffee, beer, whatever before you go in, because woe-be-tide you have to go to the toilet and miss a moment. This is breath-taking stuff. I want it to be nominated for Best Feature Length Documentary at the next Academy Awards. That may sound like a long shot, but only because of the subject matter’s inherent weirdness. In terms of proficiency and engagement, Tickled is an instant classic, one that will appear on “Top 50 Documentary” lists forever.