The Gods Must Be Crazy II (1989)
★★★ — The Gods Must Be Crazy II (1989)
The Gods Must Be Crazy II is a 1989 South African comedy directed by Jamie Uys, and it arrives as the follow-up to his 1980 original, which became one of the most commercially successful foreign-language films ever released in the United States. The first film introduced the world to the Kalahari bushman Xixo (played by N!xau), whose encounter with a discarded Coca-Cola bottle sent him on an accidental collision course with the wider, baffling world. Nine years later, Uys brought the character back for a second outing, this time setting the plot in motion when Xixo's two young children accidentally end up stranded on a poacher's truck and he must trek across the southern African bush to find them. Weaving around that central chase are a bumbling pair of soldiers from opposing sides and a bush pilot and his passenger whose small plane provides more slapstick than smooth transport. It is a film very much of its moment: broad physical comedy, minimal dialogue, and the kind of cheerful cartoon logic that was already feeling a little out of step with mainstream tastes by the late eighties. The production was a South African-American co-production between Elrina Investment and Weintraub Entertainment Group, filmed on location and running to a brisk 98 minutes. For anyone curious about other South African cinema from this exact period, it is worth having a look at the site's review of Rising Storm, another 1989 film made there.
Jamie Uys was, by this point, a veteran of South African filmmaking, having worked in the industry since the 1950s. His approach to comedy was almost entirely visual, rooted in physical gags and timing rather than wit or wordplay, which gave his films a certain borderless accessibility even if the results could feel uneven. N!xau, a San bushman from Namibia with no professional acting background before the original film, returned in the lead role and brings the same wide-eyed, good-natured presence that made his performance in the first film so disarming. Lena Farugia and Hans Strydom take on the roles of the stranded pilot and lawyer respectively, playing their parts with the kind of polished but unremarkable competence that suits the material. Eiros and Nadies, the child performers playing Xixo's children, are required mostly to look frightened or confused while perched on a moving vehicle, and they manage this with considerable conviction. The film is, by any conventional measure, a fairly rough piece of work, and audiences who came in expecting a sharp sequel found something closer to an extended sketch show set against genuinely beautiful landscape photography. It performed solidly enough on the international market, particularly in parts of Asia where the original had developed a devoted following, though it never matched the cultural footprint of its predecessor. For a different flavour of late-eighties cinema from this period, the review of The Serpent and the Rainbow is just around the corner on the blog, as is a look at Re-Animator for those who like their eighties films committed to a particular kind of lunacy.
A-Z World Movie Tour Botswana If The Gods Must Be Crazy II were a person, it’d be that mate who shows up to a dinner party wearing a T-Shirt that looks like a dinner suit smoking a pipe that produces bubbles. This film is a South African comedy tornado with sped-up chase scenes, a “rhino” that looks like it was stitched together from garden gnomes, and sound effects lifted straight from Looney Tunes. At one point, a character's feet are dangling from an aeroplane so he keeps running to keep the speed up. It's literally a live-action cartoon. But here’s the thing, it’s genuinely funny. The slapstick is relentless, the cast leans into the chaos like they’re all in on the joke, and the sheer audacity of the fake rhino’s had me laughing. Its absurd. Would I watch it again? Probably, but only if I’ve had a glass of wine and need to laugh at something utterly ridiculous. A gloriously daft time capsule of ‘80s comedy. 3 stars for commitment to the bit.
I'll be honest, I came into this one with fairly low expectations and found myself laughing more than I had any right to. There is something almost admirable about a film that commits this thoroughly to its own daftness, with no apparent interest in being anything other than what it is. The production's limitations are visible in every frame, and yet that transparency becomes part of the charm rather than a reason to look away. If you are working through world cinema in any kind of organised fashion, Botswana may not throw up many obvious choices, and this one lands somewhere between a genuine surprise and a gloriously accidental discovery. Sometimes that is exactly what you want from a Friday night film. Just, maybe, pour yourself something first.
Rating: ★★★ | Year: 1989 | Watched: 2025-05-31
Trailer
▶ Watch the official trailer for The Gods Must Be Crazy II (1989) on YouTube
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Related on Movies With Macca
More from South Africa: Death Race 2 (2010) · My Octopus Teacher (2020) · Rising Storm (1989) · Adera (2009)
More from the 1980s: Nightmare City (1980) · A Better Tomorrow (1986) · Style Wars (1983) · Garlic Is as Good as Ten Mothers (1980)
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More comedy: The Eagle (1925) · The General (1926) · Americana (2023) · The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988)
