TICKLED

REVIEWS NO-ONE ASKED FOR
by Ashton Brown

TICKLED
dir David Farrier & Dylan Reeve

TICKLING: NOT A LAUGHING MATTER

I went along to the gorgeous Civic Theatre in Auckland to see the New Zealand premier of Tickled with mixed expectations. I hadn't seen much of David Farriers journalism in the past, although I do remember him being pretty unique and finishing reasonably out there news segments (out there for mainstream news anyway) with his trademark "David Farrier - Three News" which went up in a humerous vocal crescendo (for mainstream news anyway). I knew a little bit about the nature of Tickled. I had heard or possibly read brief bits of information over the last couple of years and I understood that when Farrier and co-director Reeve stumbled across an advertisement for a professional tickling event, they expressed interest, interest which was met with untoward homophobic hostility, aggressive hate mail and an unnecessarily intense dialogue between the then TV3 reporter and the head of the event.

Tickled is a classic in it's documentary format, in that a good documentary is one that starts out with pretty straight forward intentions (eg - what is professional tickling and why do people do it?) and stumbles across something much more sinister and interesting for it's audience. Tickled starts simply enough - a couple of Kiwi blokes want to know what the hell professional tickling is and why it's organisers are so aggressive and homophobic when sent a pretty standard email of interest by a couple of pretty casual journalists. It then explodes into a dark story about blackmail, fraud, abuse, violence and anger - all presented with Farriers extremely accessible and appealing charm and wit. In true Kiwi style - no matter how many threats our two young journalistic heroes are receiving, they always manage to weave in a sense of humour, a sense of awkwardness and a sense of "what the fuck are we doing" that makes the journey so interesting and unique. Even when the story feels like it's getting a bit heavy, that classic Kiwi charm is utilised and what we end up with is an extremely intriguing black comedy documentary.

I don't want to go into the details of the story too much because you should watch it and enjoy the journey yourself. However I will say that the level of commitment that these two documentarians give to this project is absolutely the reason why it succeeds. Even when they were receiving threats from apparent much higher powers (US Attorneys) and their producers are even telling them to let it go - they keep following that yellow brick road until they uncover unexpectedly dark and fucked up situations that absolutely need to be shared. The difference between great journalism and good journalism is that good journalism presents the facts that are easy to find and great journalism finds a good story that could be great and doesn't sleep until the public get to experience the knowledge of the whole truth and nothing but the truth (the truth being the one sided opinion presented by said documentary). If you don't leave a documentary being 100% on the side of the people who made the film then the doco hasn't done it's job. These lads do their job.

Filming wise - Dominic Fryer does an exceptional job of making sure that even when guerrilla filmmaking tactics are undertaken we don't ever lose the cinematic quality and beauty required to make this film stand out. The music by Rodi Kirkcaldy & Florian Zwietnig is superb - always lets us know what we should be feeling at any given time and always makes sure we know that things are going to get a little more ominous - however hilarious.

Finally what makes Tickled such a success is David Farrier himself. I'm sure he hears this constantly - but he IS New Zealand's very own Louis Theroux, and this is absolutely a compliment (as someone who has a cat named Louis Theroux I like to think I'm an advocate for all things Theroux). It doesn't help that they look similar, but the ability that these two extremely talented gentleman share in getting people to talk about something that they don't necessarily want to talk about let alone on camera, is what make both these men two of the best in their field.

Tickled is an extraordinary journey. Beautifully paced, wonderfully hilarious and extremely intriguing. I hope Farrier continues to pave the way for New Zealand journalists who have gotten so caught up in selling a click bait headline that they have forgotten just how interesting the truth actually is.

4 out of 5. 

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