"It's just so ridiculous, it's just one of the most ridiculous stories ever.”
Pras Michel on his documentary, SWEET MICKY FOR PRESIDENT. 

I love the brutally honest quote from the former member of the Fugees, above – having watched this quite bizarre and bloody interesting documentary I would have to agree. "You couldn't make it up,” he said, “if you wrote this script and you shopped it in Hollywood and they decided to make it, everybody would be like, 'Get the fuck out of here.'" 

"It's just so ridiculous, it's just one of the most ridiculous stories ever.”
Pras Michel on his documentary, SWEET MICKY FOR PRESIDENT. 

I love the brutally honest quote from the former member of the Fugees, above – having watched this quite bizarre and bloody interesting documentary I would have to agree. "You couldn't make it up,” he said, “if you wrote this script and you shopped it in Hollywood and they decided to make it, everybody would be like, 'Get the fuck out of here.'" 

Indeed SWEET MICKY FOR PRESIDENT really is one of the most unlikely stories ever captured on film, and has as its subject a crazy political situation that I was hitherto totally ignorant of. It revolves around the 2012 Haitian presidential elections and the controversial candidacy of a Haitian pop star known as Sweet Micky (real name Michel Martelly), whose really quite mental performances include things like wearing a nappy and quite unsuccessful attempts at cross-dressing. Also represented is the volatile and complex relationship between Pras and another former Fugee, Wyclef Jean, who was also briefly a candidate to truly insane effect.

The story begins on Jan. 12, 2010, the day of the devastating Haitian earthquake, which destroyed 90 percent of Port-au-Prince, claimed nearly a quarter-million lives and displaced an incredible 2.3 million people. It was a natural disaster of epic proportions, and its degree of devastation and human death toll was felt all around the world.

Pras, who produced the film with Karyn Rachtman (music supervisor on Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs and Boogie Nights and frequent visitor to New Zealand), visited Haiti after the disaster with first-time filmmaker Benjamin Patterson with the intention of documenting the aftermath of the quake. Instead, the duo found themselves in the midst of a force to be reckoned with all on its own: the 2012 Haitian presidential elections.

"After the earthquake there was this moment when they interviewed the president of Haiti [Preval] and he didn't know where he was even going to stay that night. I was just like, 'What is up with that?'" Pras told the press at the time of the documentary’s release. "I was just thinking, 'Man, there's an election coming up and I just need to do something. I need to support someone who can come in there and energise the people.'"

That person was Pras’ politically inexperienced but highly passionate, eccentric musician friend Sweet Micky Martelly. Pras first met and befriended the out there pop singer back in 1997 when the Fugees played Haiti. It is true that his onstage stick veered between the obscene and the bizarre, but his more political-minded songs, however, are critical of Haiti's corrupt and ineffective government, and earned him a spot on the Haitian government's hit list. Reportedly his explicit onstage persona served as a smokescreen for angry and political lyrics directed towards the National Palace inhabited by one corrupt dictator after another. After the regimes of Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier, Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and the aforementioned René Préval, with coups in between, the Haiti people were fed up and Micky knew all about it. A bit of a freak yes, but a freak with one finger most definitely on the pulse – and that’s one more than his predecessors.

So it is worth a watch, just plain bizarreness not withstanding? I say yes – it is about as entertaining as it gets and a great look into the corrupt political system of a land most of us Down Under know little about. The madness that ensues after Martelly throws his hat in the ring is a compelling watch, and things really heat up when Pras’ fellow Fugee Wyclef Jean throws his – highly decorative – hat in the ring. (Jean declared his candidacy but did not make the cut because he failed to meet the five-year consecutive-residency requirement mandated by Haiti’s constitution)

There are also random cameos from everyone from Sean Penn (one of the best bits) to Bill Clinton,Ben Stiller, Noam Chomsky, Nigel Barker and Eddie Murphy – making for one hell of a ride.