Tshabalala Gatvol's Rainbow Skellums Survival Guide to South Africa WC 2010

Posted on 05.28.10
Film Reviews by Spling

If candid camera were taken as seriously as Pop Art… Leon Schuster would be its Andy Warhol. Besides taking the piss and literally taking a piss on his artwork, he’s dominated South African comedy film ever since Jamie Uys dropped a Coke bottle on N!xau’s head.

The side-splitting American comedy pursuit could only go so far with lawsuits flying around, yet the world of candid camera has developed its own raw sense of local flavour and hilarity under the wing of the accomplished Schuster. Now just like Warhol, Schuster isn’t fully appreciated by everyone… but it’ll be difficult for you to walk five steps in South Africa without meeting someone who remembers a funny moment with Schucks.

Andy Warhol was daring. Well, so is Leon Schuster. He’s resorted to wearing heavily padded prosthetic disguises in his latest outing, Schucks Tshabalala’s Survival Guide to South Africa 2010, but who can blame him if he wore a bullet-proof vest too! He’s taken at least a hundred snot-klaps in his day and that’s just off-camera. On-camera, Schuster has the ability of a full-time matchstick man, roping the victim in with his utterly bizarre set of South African characters and accents in a situation even more ridiculous. It’s a surreal scenario, like watching a car crash in slow motion as Schuster builds the mark up to such extreme emotion to have them hit him in the face or bolt like the last sheep in a slaughterhouse.

Schuster has become a household name, but more than that… he’s a legend – giving a country with 11 official languages something to laugh about is anything but easy. You can hurl sticks and stones at the brand of low-brow comedy in movies like There’s A Zulu On My Stoep, Mr. Bones and Mama Jack, but the numbers speak for themselves. Schucks Tshabalala’s Survival Guide to South Africa 2010 is a return to the candid camera stuff. The grand candid master must have realised how hungry people were for reality comedy in post-recession, pre-World Cup fervor. This must have also been spurred on by a reasonable attempt from a new candid franchise called Rainbow Skellums and it’s been a while since that 50/50 mix of story and candid camera in Oh Schucks, I’m Gatvol!

Read more »