Tickled

New Zealand submitted this unusual documentary to the 2016 Seattle International Film Festival. We see a curious journalist try to discover what an "endurance tickling competition" looks like. He immediately hits fierce resistance that quickly becomes litigious. Now he's REALLY curious. We follow him first to the airport in Auckland. From there we go to Los Angeles; then Hollywood; next Garden City, Long Island, New York; Muskegon, Michigan; and Orlando, Florida. Hmmm... Curiouser and curiouser....

We watch him interview participants, all of whom were young men enticed by gifts and money. If they changed their minds, we discover the ugly surprises that awaited them. Our investigators were as surprised as we in the audience, to discover that tickling is a version of sexual fetish. Who knew? I guess it's a type of domination...

Journalists David Farrier and Dylan Reeve are our intrepid documentarians. They recorded the threats and faced the possibility of lawsuits and penalties. The more they learned, the more we were drawn into this maze of phony names, bewildering websites and the mystifying money behind the entire enterprise.

Male-on-male competitive endurance tickling competitions are an international phenomenon. To me, they weren't entertaining and the tickling looked boring, but you will discover that a predatory figurehead still backs these profitable viral videos.

I did NOT find this entertaining, although it WAS interesting.