Special Review
This review was requested by Patreon support JacksJD. If you'd like to support me on Patreon, click the button below. Visit PatreonIn the 1990s, Canadian-born comedian Tom Green was incredibly popular due to his shock humor and lack of shame. Starting in September of 1994, he had his own show called The Tom Green Show, which ran until 1996. Acting as a precursor to Jackass, the show primarily consisted of Green performing all sorts of shocking stunts in public. Also, much like Bam Margera would do with Viva La Bam, Green would torment his parents and embarrass them. The show was picked up by MTV in 1999, where it became insanely popular worldwide, making Tom Green a superstar. With his newfound stardom, Green was offered numerous movie roles and appeared in Road Trip, Charlie’s Angels, and Stealing Harvard. Somehow, he convinced 20th Century Fox executives to let him star in, write, and direct his own feature film. So, on April 20th, 2001, Tom Green’s Freddy Got Fingered was released into theaters.
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Synopsis
Gordon Brody (Tom Green) is a 28-year-old unemployed man who dreams of being a professional cartoonist and making daddy proud. Said daddy is his father Jim (Rip Torn), who’s overjoyed to see his grown son move out of the basement. Once in LA, Gordon manages to meet Dave Davidson (Anthony Michael Hall), the head of a major animation studio. Unfortunately, Davidson rejects Gordon’s ideas, calling them “nonsensical”, so he moves back in with his parents, much to Jim’s annoyance. After a skateboarding accident puts his friend Darren (Harland Williams) in the hospital, Gordon meets Betty Menger (Marisa Coughlan). A quadriplegic doctor, Betty also has a passion for rockets, which ties into her oral fixation among other….strange fetishes. As Gordon struggles to make it big, he and his father are at war to ruin each other’s lives. Also, the title refers to a “joke” involving Gordon’s brother Freddy (Eddie Kaye Thomas).
Review
The late great Roger Ebert once said this movie “doesn’t deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence with barrels”. This refers to the old saying of “bottom of the barrel”, often referring to the absolute worst of the worst. In that regard, I personally think Mr. Ebert wasn’t harsh enough towards Freddy Got Fingered, which is saying something. This is one of those films where you wonder just who greenlit this and who thought this would be funny. Freddy Got Fingered is one of the worst comedies I’ve ever seen, and I thought It’s Pat was the worst. Much like that film, this one has very little plot, a really unlikeable lead, and “jokes” that fall flat. In many ways, this almost feels like a feature-length version of The Tom Green Show, but it doesn’t work. Then again, maybe this wasn’t intended to be a mainstream hit.
This film tries to take the conventions of many comedies of the 90s and turn them on their heads. It’s the standard “loser tries to prove himself” storyline with the conventional love interest and emphasis on going against authority. However, despite what it tries to do, it fails because Gordon is a mean-spirited, sociopathic, and deranged man-child. It’s sad seeing Rip Torn and Anthony Michael Hall go from The Beastmaster and The Breakfast Club respectively to this. If I can give this film any positives, Marisa Coughlan is somewhat charming as the paraplegic love interest. She at least has a goal that she legitimately works towards as opposed to Gordon lying to get his way. I will say that this was slightly easier to sit through than It’s Pat, but that’s not saying much. Overall, Freddy Got Fingered is just as bad as you’ve heard.
Buy Freddy Got Fingered from Amazon: https://amzn.to/34D5lF5
