Tickled began with a simple idea. Some film-makers were exploring a fun story about the world of competitive tickling after seeing a couple videos on the internet. But this documentary is only partially about people being put in restraints and tickled until they can hardly stand it. The rabbit hole that these film-makers get sucked down is surprisingly deep, and absolutely thrilling. Faced with a great deal of opposition, it feels like every scene in Tickled requires the documentary team to take a risk. There are action movies that do less to excite me than this movie did by simply approaching some men to ask a few questions. Who would have thought that there was so much to learn about such a silly topic? The documentary team does some research, and helps fill in as many of the gaps in the story as possible. I was impressed by the fact that they were able to find some people to come forward with the truth, and also that they never shied away from confronting those involved.
I think it's important to point out that all the videos that are shown in this film involve fully-clothed people (with the exception of some guys who have their shirts off.) While it might be a fetish for some, there's nothing overtly sexual in the content we are shown. That's what makes the entire story so fascinating, because it feels like a relatively harmless series of videos that may titillate someone, but shouldn't scandalize all the people involved. Yet there's a cover-up going on, and the joy of this documentary is getting to the bottom of it all. I was downright riveted by all the things we learned as this movie progressed, and I was desperate for more. In fact, I fear that's the one area where Tickled felt a bit lacking. The pay-off at the end felt like we had a few answers but no solutions. I understand it's not the role of documentarians to fix the world's problems, but I felt the film left me on an unsatisfactory cliffhanger. Tickled is still an excellent story, and it delivers more than you'd expect.
