Tickled

2016 documentary

Rating: 13/20

Plot: An investigation into the sinister world of competitive tickling.

Faithful readers might recall that I had this on my "most anticipated movie list" a couple of years ago because it's a movie about competitive endurance tickling. Unfortunately, I was a little disappointed in the finished product. A documentary about competitive endurance tickling is maybe the sort of thing that is always going to be better on paper maybe?

Part of the problem was that I didn't like the documentarian David Farrier all that much. I'm sure he's a pleasant individual, and I'm sure I'd get along great with him if he tracked me down to ask me questions about my own experiences appearing in competitive endurance tickling videos. But so much of this movie centered on his detective work here as he tried to unravel the mysterious and possibly nefarious presences lurking in the shadows of these fetish videos, and I just didn't care for his style.

That mystery itself was only somewhat gripping. I think Farrier sets us up for a big revelation that just never really comes. There's a moment later in the documentary that you get a little excited for, but when it happens, it's kind of a dud, like a firecracker that you thought would go BANG but instead just kind of sat there and looked smug. I felt like I had been strapped down on a table to be tickled before being told that the tickler had forgotten to bring his fingers.

This is one of those documentaries that would have been great fun as a 30-minute installment of a television series, the sort of thing I think Farrier does in New Zealand. Stretched into a feature-length documentary, the novelty of the idea wore off quickly and the investigation just wasn't as intriguing as Farrier wanted us to believe.