“TICKLED” My rating: B
91 minutes | MPAA rating:R
As if the Internet wasn’t creepy enough, along comes “Tickled,” a documentary so suffused with anxiousness and oozing such an intimidating pall that it turns even the childlike act of tickling into a perversion.
David Farrier is a New Zealand broadcast journalist who specializes in offbeat human interest stories. When he found an Internet site devoted to “competitive endurance tickling” he figured it was worth looking into.
The videos showed young men being tied up and tickled by other young men with fingers, feathers, even electric toothbrushes. The videos are both playful and sadistic, seemingly innocent yet weirdly homoerotic.
But as soon as he began making inquiries, Farrier received cease and desist letters from Jane O’Brien Media, the company apparently behind the videos. The firm sent a trio of “negotiators” from the U.S. to Aukland to confront Farrier and threaten him with legal actions that would gobble up his time and resources.
Most of us would bail. Not Farrier: “I didn’t want to give in to a bunch of bullies.”
And so — with friend and co-director Dylan Reeve — he began sniffing around the world of competitive tickling. (more…)
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