ActuallyGlimmer The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

Aneesa Wardle The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Allison Davies The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Kayden This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

Platypuschow Tickled is such a weird creature, a documentary about the "Sport" of competitive endurance tickling. Yep, you read that right.However that is merely the beginning, as the documentary delves deeper it gets dark. Really, really dark.Not to ruin anything but there is so much more and the subject matter is remarkable, trouble is its ruined by a very lackluster near spineless documentary filmmaker who squanders the potential.Within moments I felt like I was watching another scripted documentary alike Catfish (2010) the concept was too fantastical and everything just felt too convenient.However upon investigation it certainly appears to be legitimate and once you've watched the documentary you'll realise that is a really scary fact.Well made and truly fascinating subject matter but handled by people who were just out of their depth.We can only dream what could have been! Do hope this doesn't develop a TV show like Catfish otherwise my spidey sense will start tingling again.

Movie_Muse_Reviews Some of the best documentaries start out seeming to be about one subject and turn out to be about something totally different. That is definitely the central tactic of "Tickled," a movie that suggests a deep dive into the bizarre world of "competitive tickling" but surfaces as a film exposing one person's manipulative use of power and money.New Zealand journalist David Farrier and filmmaker Dylan Reeve knew they were on to something big when Farrier started to face threats and fierce legal resistance to his investigation of online tickling videos posted by a company named Jane O'Brien Media. They uncover a rather fascinating story, but whether the fish they caught is "feature documentary big" is the larger question that follows this movie around like a shadow.Bringing to light that some people have tickling fetishes certainly doesn't merit a 90-minute film, so the story Farrier and Reeve uncover has to be worthy of that time. To that end, you could make the case either way. Their investigation of the mysterious entity of Jane O'Brien Media is the bulk of the film's action, and they carefully unfurl the story, detail by important detail, to maximize tension. Some of these details seem obvious, making their deliberate withholding of information or of their key sources a little more gimmicky than journalistic.The story develops legs when we meet some of the young men who have been victimized by this company. Jane O'Brien Media deliberately seeks out young athletic men who will be incentivized by money; the problem is that when any of this "talent" tries to back out, the company uses the videos to ruin the young men's online reputations, i.e. making these videos high in search results about them and plastering their name all over the internet with the videos. What's unsaid is the way this exploits the homoerotic nature of the tickling videos as leverage for extortion."Tickled," however, focuses on finding out the truth about Jane O'Brien Media more so than the power of using the internet to manipulate people, or about how casting young men in a homosexual light can do incredible damage to their lives. These are issues that warrant exploration, but Farrier and Reeve mostly use them to add stakes and tone to their investigation.Investigative reporting is also not visually interesting, which "Tickled" struggles with. Too many shots show Farrier or other subjects/sources in the documentary sitting at a computer, or hands typing on a keyboard with voice-over. This is also the limitation of a story that lives almost exclusively in a digital realm. All of Farrier's brazen attempts to confront the people he needs answers from seem like courageous, bold actions taken in the name of truth, but the flipside of that coin is that his documentary would be nothing without them. There's no action in this film without him taking it.A major newspaper report or a long "60 Minutes" segment would seem most appropriate for "Tickled." As fascinating as the truth they discover and the portrait they paint of the individual behind all this are, the documentary feature format feels like an exhaustive means of telling the story. Farrier and Reeve also ignore the most interesting questions in favor of the mystery narrative, though some of Farrier's voice- over toward the end reveals their awareness of these bigger issues. There's one attempt to tie together the film's main topics of tickling and a controlling, abusive individual, but it requires overt explanation, and when that occurs, you know a documentary has become a little too splintered."Tickled" tells a story absolutely worth hearing and raises important questions, but because its tellers discovered themselves in the middle of that story, they weren't quite able to see the big picture and tell that story in a way most fitting for the big screen and that best tackled the issues at its core.~Steven CThanks for reading! Visit Movie Muse Reviews for more

memesogny Sometimes when i'm bored i'll watch porn with a really long introduction so i become attached to the people in the video and this is basically what that is, if you have a weird sadistic fetish like me you'll probably find your fingers getting kinda sticky within this documentary and that's a good thing. most of the footage is good quality so if your a cinophile that'll be ticking(tickling) your boxes and if you haven't yet picked up a kink for tickling then you're about to.In all seriousness this actually a very good little film and i really enjoyed it. but anyway in the words of my dwarf god "yer makin' a chicken out of a feather" and i don't know what that means but oh dear lord do i want to have torbjorns 20 children right ow.(((im really sorry god please don't hold this against me)))

gregking4 New Zealand journalist David Farrier (tv series Short Poppies, etc) has made a career out of looking at the weird side of life. But even he was unprepared for the fallout after stumbling upon a website about "competitive endurance tickling" in which young men were paid to be tied up and tickled, complete with some videos. Although the on-line videos were pretty harmless, they piqued his curiosity and Farrier decided to find out more. But when he contacted Jane O'Brien Media to try an arrange an interview he was harassed and threatened with lawsuits from a high powered US firm. Their secretive and aggressive manner intrigued Farrier even further and he tried to probe beneath the surface. He and his collaborator, writer/filmmaker and computer expert Dylan Reeve, discovered a vaguely sinister to this tickling fetish as they travelled to Los Angeles and New York. Farrier talks to a couple of former tickle participants who talk about being blackmailed and threatened. What began as a light hearted investigation into something that initially seemed vaguely homoerotic but innocuous turned into a thriller as Farrier and Reeve tried to probe a web of corporate paperwork to find out the identity of the mysterious figures behind Jane O'Brien Media. By turns amusing and gripping, Tickled gives us a look at the darker side of the internet and a vaguely unsettling subculture, and explores themes of power, control, harassment, fetishism, corruption, and criminal activity. This is the first feature length documentary from Farrier, and he has an amiable screen presence, but he also demonstrates a dogged sense of purpose as he refuses to back down from threats and intimidation as he gets closer to learning the identity of the person behind this unusual enterprise. A strange and decidedly weird little documentary that is unexpectedly compelling and entertaining.