Adopted: Funny mockumentary to watch

Shore, a 40-year-old American comedian and one-time movie star, documents his journey to South Africa to adopt an African child.
It’s a dodgy one. It’s a dangerous play. It leaves you with many moments where you think its crazy.
But overall, Shore shoots for your gag reflex, and he scores. This is one of those films (Like Sasha Baron Cohen’s Bruno and the Aussie gem Kenny) that is so convincing that its fiction seems more truthful than the average real documentary.
With local smoother-and-shaker Sam Hendrickse as executive producer, everything shot in SA and local singer-songwriters Farryl Purkiss, Simon Van Gend and Nibs Van der Spuy providing the whimsical soundtrack, the final result has a decidedly South African flavour.
For a change, this flavour is not as distasteful to trendies as Leon Schuster’s, but still gleefully exploits schadenfreude and others’ shame to make us laugh,and cringe like a good mockumentary should. Think more of the giggles, less of the shits (or to put it in comedy lingo, a white-face, not red-nose approach to humour).
Audiences are going to be confused. It’s the kind of movie that really does make you ask: “What IS this?!” Is it a mockumentary? Is it a staged documentary? Or is it a series of punks and tricks played on people who afterwards may or may not have signed release forms?
Well, I’m guessing there’s a mix of things at play. Shore’s love interests are undoubtedly acting, as is the guy from the adoption agency (although he really does run an adoption agency — he was just in on the game.)
The main kid actors, thankfully, are also just playing their parts. But in other cases, it isn’t quite as clear. Oprah’s assistant? The security guards? The guy at the market who proudly shows Shore his room and boasts of his conquests? Luckily, the acting is so good (or so deliberately bad) that the improve, au natural and acted characters, fit together without triggering a viewer’s disbelief.
One thing is certain, and that is that Shore waded right in there and got his hands dirty, visiting real townships, meeting real people, and making the humour from real (often mocking) reactions in real situations. The cameras are openly acknowledged, giving the whole thing a pretty convincing documentary feel, and the kids are all brilliant, playing their scornful, manipulative parts as creatures wiser than their years, and wisers than the idiot American who is so arrogantly auditioning them for a life in the US (once they have been de-loused and so on.)
Anyhow, only one thing really matters: is it funny?
The answer is yes. It is probably going to be funny in quite a different way to a local audience to how it is in the US and Europe. Perhaps South Africans (like the unwitting participants in the film) might spend more time laughing at Shore than he really intended, and will notice the moments when his mask slips beyond acting into ironic self-punking.
And maybe that overseas audiences will have a few sneering moments of hilarity at our expense when South Africans unwittingly live the stereotypes.
But all that matters is that we will all be laughing — and we will all have plenty to say and debate afterwards.