FREDDY GOT FINGERED 2001, dir. Tom Green 87 min. Rated R. Starring: Tom Green, Rip Torn, Marisa Coughlan, Eddie Kaye thomas. Review by Noel Wood

Some movies you watch because they’re supposed to be good. Some movies you watch because they might be so bad they’re good. And then some movies you watch like you would an automobile accident: with a morbid curiosity.

Oh, I knew going in to this movie that I was in for a stinker. I mean, everyone told me how terrible it was. But while shopping for something to watch on a bored evening, I ran across this little nugget. And by nugget, I’m not referring to gold or joy. I’m talking the type of nugget that won’t go down no matter how many times you flush.

Yes, FREDDY GOT FINGERED is a terrible movie. In that sense, I truly got my money’s worth. I rented this movie just to prove to myself that it existed: That something this utterly retarded could get Greenlighted while thousands of struggling filmmakers go starving each and every year. And I got exactly what I expected. I can’t even figure out where to start with this monstrosity. But since it was the fledgling film for Hollywood’s latest auteur Tom Green, let’s start with him.

Tom Green is not funny. At least not funny enough to be a celebrity. Sure, he’s the kind of guy that if you knew him in a social setting, he’d be kind of fun in small doses. Like, if Tom Green was invited to your party, you’d sit there and laugh at him all night. But there’s a difference between being funny in that setting and carrying it over to the entertainment industry. Green comes off as annoying on celluloid, just as he did on his ill-fated television show. His stuff has never really been funny, which is somehting even his regular viewers have agreed with me on. The real reason you’d watch his show is just to see how stupid his next antic would be. There’s really nothing funny about humping a dead moose or sucking on a cow’s teat, is there? It’s just “let’s see what this clown’ll do next” trainwreck type stuff. Thank God it didn’t last long.

FREDDY GOT FINGERED is an hour and a half of stupidity. Now, I wasn’t exactly expecting a Greek Tragedy here, but at least other films of its ilk try to have a story. It almost looks like that’s going to happen for the first ten minutes of the film too. Looks like it’s going to be a nice story about a young man flying the coop and starting a new life, right? I mean, Tom Green’s character Gord gets a car and travels to Hollywood to sell his animations, and in the meantime gets a job at a cheese sandwich factory. But minutes later, he’s given up. He’s back at home. He’s doing tons of mindless things. He’s licking open wounds, prancing around in the hide of a deer, and swinging newborn babies by their umbilical cords. Oh, and then he meets a nice girl named Betty, who gets her kicks by being caned in the shins and giving blowjobs. Yes, this is all part of this movie, that plods along with no story to speak of for the first hour or so, before the animation-selling subplot goes back in to effect for a final story arc.

In other words, there’s a whole lot of pointlessness going on here, and it ain’t even funny. And this is coming from someone who gave a glowing review to another MTV-show alum’s movie, JACKASS

Which leads us to the fact that this movie got made to begin with. I mean, I guess at one point someone expected Tom Green to be a big star for some time to come, and as a result, gave him the reigns to create this monstrosity. Now, seeing that Green has virtually faded in to obscurity with such shit as STEALING HARVARD under his belt, it looks like someone at 20th Century Fox is eating crow. Or looking for work.

I don’t know. Maybe Tom Green fancies himself as some sort of surrealist. Maybe there’s some deep insight into just what type of sensitive artist really lies deep within the psyche of Green. Maybe this is a piece of misunderstood art that will be rediscovered and treasured in half a century. After all, CITIZEN KANE and 2001 and STAR WARS were misunderstood when they were released and only became classics in retrospect right?

Ah, who am I kidding. This is a steaming pile of horse shit. I mean, no matter how much tequila I drink in a night, I’ll never justify the existence of a film that features not one, but two sequences where Tom Green manually masturbates large quadripeds. One such scene happens within the first five minutes of the film.

The title even stinks. Bad. Don’t be fooled, folks: The ‘fingering’ of Freddy, Gord’s more level-headed younger brother, has nothing to do with a criminal investigation. You see, in a fit of rage toward his father, Gord accuses pop of molesting Freddy. It’s a five-minute long subplot that adds nothing to the movie except for a title that nobody in the world thinks is funny but the man who used to sleep with Drew Barrymore.

And that, in itself, is a higher crime than anything that this man could have ever committed to celluloid.

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