Tickled is so compelling, so thoroughly engrossing, so freaking enjoyable, that it deserves the kind of praise that compels you to the cinema. See this movie. It’s amazing, astonishing, jaw-dropping, revelatory, brilliant. You’ll notice I’m avoiding talking about the film itself; that’s completely deliberate, for the less you know, the better. Ostensibly it’s about the dark underbelly of competitive endurance tickling. Say what? Exactly.
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. 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. The only reason I can’t give it five stars is that I feel like it could’ve gone an extra mile in really relating its findings to the grander human condition; regardless, this is a genius piece of documentary filmmaking. I want it to be nominated for Best Feature Length Documentary at the next Academy Awards. It’s unlikely to be, because of the tickling. Funny.
CJ Johnson
