Set in Southern Africa, the film stars Namibian San farmer Nǃxau ǂToma as Xi, a hunter-gatherer of the Kalahari Desert whose tribe discovers a glass Coca-Cola bottle dropped from an aeroplane, and believe it to be a gift from their gods.

When Xi sets out to return the bottle to the gods, his journey becomes intertwined with that of a biologist (Marius Weyers), a newly hired village school teacher (Sandra Prinsloo), and a band of guerrilla terrorists.

Despite its success, the film attracted criticism for its depiction of race and perceived ignorance of discrimination and apartheid in South Africa.

In the fictitious state Biryani, northwest of Botswana, Boga's men have killed three cabinet members and injured two others in an attempt on the president's life, sending the military in hot pursuit.

Their Land Rover stalls while trying to ford a deep river; he hoists it out with a winch, but it continues lifting the vehicle to a very high treetop level while a forgetful Steyn is distracted extricating Thompson from a wait-a-bit tree.

Eventually, a snobbish safari tour guide named Jack Hind arrives and takes Thompson the rest of the way to the village.

One day, Xi happens upon a herd of goats and, believing them to be wild animals, shoots one with a tranquilizer arrow, planning to eat it.

They manage to immobilize six of the eight guerrillas using makeshift tranquilizer darts launched by Xi with a miniature bow, allowing Thompson and the children to confiscate the guerillas' firearms.

[3] After writing the script for The Gods Must Be Crazy, Uys reportedly spent three months traversing the Kalahari Desert with an interpreter, searching for a San person to play the role of Xi in the film.

[3] Visiting areas of the desert inhabited by the San, Uys took photographs of individuals he felt he might cast, and then "marked the longitude and latitude, so we could find them again".

[9] Unlike what was presented in The Gods Must Be Crazy, N!xau did not lead a hunter-gatherer lifestyle; he grew up as a herder on a farm in Botswana, before moving to Namibia to work as a cook.

[11] The documentary shows San restricted to living in a reservation established by South African authorities in Tsumkwe, Namibia.

[13][14] According to Uys, N!xau would be flown back to his home in the Kalahari Desert every three or four weeks to prevent him from suffering from culture shock.

For its release in the United States, the original Afrikaans dialogue was dubbed into English, and voiceover work was provided for !Kung and Tswana lines.

[17] The film initially received a limited American release through Jensen Farley Pictures in 1982, but performed poorly in at least half a dozen test cities.

[25] Variety stated that the film's "main virtues are its striking, widescreen visuals of unusual locations, and the sheer educational value of its narration".

[13] In his review of the film for The New York Times, critic Vincent Canby wrote that "watching Jamie Uys's Gods Must Be Crazy, [...] one might suspect that there were no such things as apartheid or the Immorality Act or even South Africa".

[33] The Gods Must Be Crazy attracted criticism for its perpetuation of racial stereotypes and ignorance of discrimination and apartheid in South Africa.

[3] In the U.S., the film was reportedly picketed by the National Conference of Black Lawyers and other anti-apartheid groups when it screened at the 68th Street Playhouse in New York City.

[3] Both New York Times critic Vincent Canby and author Josef Gugler called the film "patronizing" towards the San people.

[34] She wrote: "Because the myth of Bushman innocence and bliss underlies the popularity of The Gods Must Be Crazy, it is no surprise that Mr. Uys would like us to believe in it.

There is, however, little to laugh about in Bushmanland: 1,000 demoralized, formerly independent foragers crowd into a squalid, tubercular homeland, getting by on handouts of cornmeal and sugar, drinking Johnny Walker or home brew, fighting with one another and joining the South African Army".

The San have been the subject of a century of rapid social change and especially in the last twenty years have been forced to endure all the 'benefits' of South Africa's apartheid policies in Namibia".

[35] Gugler wrote that the guerrillas in the film are depicted as "bad Africans [...] dangerous and destructive all right, but they are also indolent and inept.

He, in turn, serves to confirm the apartheid credo that Africans would be happy with the White dispensation were it not for foreigners fomenting discontent and making trouble".