Freddy Got Fingered Review
by Jon Popick (jpopick AT sick-boy DOT com)July 19th, 2001
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Okay, let's cut to the chase: If you're a fan of The Tom Green Show, you'll probably really like Freddy Got Fingered. If you hate the show, or can't stand Tom Green, you've got no business going to see it. And for the folks that don't know who Tom Green is, consider yourself warned - Freddy is a solid 12 on the gross-out scale (out of 10). As if the title wasn't enough of a warning...
Green, who also directed and co-wrote Freddy, plays Gord Brody, a cartoonist (the third we've seen this year, after Monkeybone and Tomcats) who, as the film opens, is about to relocate from his parents' basement in Portland to Hollywood, where he's already secured a job at a cheese sandwich factory until he hits it big and sells his animation ideas. His parents (Rip Torn and Julie Hagerty) proudly wave goodbye to their oldest son as he drives off in the new car they've just bought for him. Less than three minutes later, he's grabbing horse cock.
It turns out that Gord is a phenomenally bad, unfocused cartoonist who is given some shaky advice by a cartoon bigwig (played by Anthony Michael Hall) - quit his day job and "get inside the animal." The latter direction is supposed to help Gord flesh out his crude animated characters, but instead affords him the opportunity to play with roadkill. And that's before he falls in love with a handicapped, amateur rocket scientist with an oral fixation who gets off on being caned.
The bulk of Freddy focuses on the relationship between Gord and his overbearing father. Gord thinks he's getting treated unfairly, while his dad wonders why he can't be like younger brother Freddy (Eddie Kaye Thomas, Black and White), a gainfully employed bank teller. If you're familiar with Green's television show, some of the film's content, one might theorize, is probably based on his relationship with his real father, a man who spent his entire career in the military.
This ain't Citizen Kane here. There's a ton of gross-out material, and almost none of it is even slightly integral to the plot. The film is two-thirds over before you realize what the title means. Freddy's music often overpowers its dialogue, which some may actually consider a good thing. But none of that matters when you're busting your gut watching a delirious Torn run though Pakistan wearing nothing but a bathrobe.
Green has no real professional acting experience, no familiarity with writing feature-film scripts and absolutely zero know-how when it comes to directing. But you know what? There are a lot of films that are worse than Freddy - films made by experienced talent. You have to admire his ability to cajole money from a major film studio to make this thing, too. And he does all of his own stunts. He's the complete package, or a real tool, depending on if you like him or not. Personally, I don't think Green is too far off from Jim Carrey's work on In Living Colour. Green is just as funny and just as unpolished as Carrey was back then - a real diamond in the rough who is probably going to be around a lot longer than 15 minutes (hey, if J. Lo can do it, why can't he?).
The only other actor to emerge from Green's gigantic shadow is Torn, who, if you can believe it, plays a more vulgar version of his Larry Sanders character. He is perfectly cast here. Freddy also features cameos from Green's new wife Drew Barrymore, Shaquille O'Neal and Canadian TV talk-show host Mike Bullard, who once threw up on live television when Green taunted him with a dead animal. And if you look close, you can see footage of Green 's lymph-node surgery, too.
1:30 - R for crude sexual and bizarre humor, and for strong language
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