Freddy Got Fingered

Plot

In the movie, Green plays a cartoonist named Gordon Brody (nicknamed 'Gord') pursuing his ambition to obtain a contract for a TV show. Gord also has a handicapped love interest, played by Marisa Coughlan, and a best friend, played by Harland Williams, who has left Gord's lifestyle for a mainstream bank job. A major subplot is Gord's feud with his father, and at one point in the movie, Gord accuses his father, played by Rip Torn, of molesting his younger brother, Freddy, played by Eddie Kaye Thomas. During the course of the film, we are introduced to various other subplots that catalogs Gord's daily experiences. These include a local neighborhood boy who finds himself the victim of various misfortunes, often involving Gord's entry onto the scene. Tom Green's then wife Drew Barrymore has a cameo appearance playing the receptionist at Mr. Dave Davidson's cartoon company.

Backwards man

In one particular scene, Gord dons his father's (portrayed by actor Rip Torn) suit backwards. While admiring himself in the mirror, Gord begins walking backwards and forwards toward the mirror, muttering:

I'm the backwards man, the backwards man.

I can walk back as fast as you can.

Despite the film's pitiful showing at the box-office, this scene remains one of the more referred to and popular scenes.

Production

The theatrically released cut of the movie is 87 minutes long and received an R rating from the Motion Picture Association of America. As an extra on the DVD release, Green also included a version of the movie which he had edited to secure a PG rating. The PG-rated cut of Freddy Got Fingered is three minutes long.

Critical response

The film was almost universally panned by critics, many of whom gave it zero stars. The Toronto Star created a one-time new rating just for Freddy got Fingered, giving it "negative one star out of five stars." CNN's Paul Clinton called it "quite simply the worst movie ever released by a major studio in Hollywood history"^*.

Roger Ebert gave the film a rare zero-stars rating and described the film's humor thus:

"This movie doesn't scrape the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn't the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn't below the bottom of the barrel. This movie doesn't deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence with barrels...The day may come when Freddy Got Fingered is seen as a milestone of neo-surrealism. The day may never come when it is seen as funny."

James Berardinelli from "Reelviews" also gave the film zero stars and mentioned: "...I have to report that this motion picture is arguably the worst piece of cinematic crap I have ever experienced theatrically. Hyperbole, you wonder? I looked through my list of zero-star movies and couldn't find one entry."

Perhaps the only critic who gave it a generally positive review was A.O. Scott of the New York Times, who compared the film to conceptual performance art. ^*

Freddy Got Fingered is thus widely regarded as signaling the absolute limit of what gross-out humor can achieve. Indeed, since the film's release, with the possible exception of The Movie, movies based around the strict "shock value" of gross-out humor have been in decline. The movie does have a cult following, including some fans who consider it a so-bad-it's-good type of movie.

The film "won" in five categories at the 2001 Golden Raspberry Awards and, in acknowledgement of the critical consensus regarding the film's merits, Green appeared at the ceremony to accept his awards.

"I'd just like to say to all the other nominees in the audience: I don't think that I deserve it any more than the rest of you. I'd like to say that; I don't think that it would be true, though." - Tom Green, accepting his Razzies

References

Roger Ebert's review of Freddy Got Fingered

External links

Story by Tom Carson, mostly laudatory.
Freddy Got Fingered - Jabootu's Bad Movie Dimension