Susan Granger’s review of “FREDDY GOT FINGERED” (20th Century-Fox)
Humorist Max Wilk once said: “This picture is so bad that you shouldn’t even walk down the street where it’s playing in case it starts to rain and you’re tempted to go inside and seek shelter.” And that comment was never more valid than for this wretched comedy directed by and starring MTV comedian Tom Green (“Road Trip”). Devised by Green and Derek Harvie, the story revolves around a 28 year-old skateboarding slacker named Gord Brody, who moves back home to live in his parents’ basement when he quits his job at a cheese factory and decides to be an animator. Over the objections of his adoring mother (Julie Hagerty), his irascible father (Rip Torn) thinks he should stop “doodling,” grow up, get a real job and get out of the house. Their bickering soon becomes a foul feud which escalates into an all-out war. Meanwhile, Gord has a girl-friend, Betty (Marisa Coughlan), an amateur rocket scientist/nymphomaniac, a paraplegic whose idea of foreplay is having her lifeless legs beaten with a bamboo stick! Plus there’s his buddy (Harland Williams) and annoying younger brother, Freddy (Eddie Kaye Thomas). While not exactly autobiographical, Green admits that some actual events during his rise to fame and fortune doing “The Tom Green Show” in his native Canada inspired the story. So what goes wrong? Everything. Green’s crass, crude, maniacal behavior – under the guise of “shock comedy” – is beyond bizarre and decidedly depraved, particularly raunchy sequences involving a bloody deer carcass, a newborn swung by its umbilical cord, and inappropriate fondling of a horse and an elephant. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Freddy Got Fingered” is a gross, disgusting 1. And the titular “fingering” is an alleged accusation about Gord’s father abusing his brother.
