A documentary? Or fiction? You choose. Ostensibly, it is a documentary about explorer Tahir Shah. The young explorer (who looks like Dave Attell from Comedy Central's "Insomniac") has discovered a number of abandoned cities, ancient temples and lost tombs around the world. Now he heads for Peru to find "The House of the Tiger King," a lost Incan city of gold. Along the way, he hires a lying guide named Pancho, lazy porters, a bunch of argumentative white explorers to help him out, and more.
You being to suspect this is all fake; no one would be so inept! Except that this is real. They really do go into the bush, climb mountains, lose their food, get off track, and get bitten by snakes and piranhas and alligators. Monkeys do "do their business" on their heads.
Part black comedy, part documentary, part history film. Shah is such a verbose, prolix-prose type that you can't help but think he's a idiot. When will we find out it's all a joke? Only, it's not. And then they begin to find a stone road...
In truth, this is how expeditions really turn out. Inter-cultural miscommunication is common. Problems with porters do happen, often. Local myth and superstition do play big roles in communication, location and exploration. It's not "Indiana Jones," this is real life. The film is rather trying at times, because the explorers seem to be so obnoxious. But the camera work and editing are terrific, and the film manages to bring out some intriguing and subtle truths about the way the world works.
