Freddy Got Fingered (April 19/01)

Less a movie and more a series of completely unrelated "funny" vignettes, Freddy Got Fingered marks the directorial debut of shock comic Tom Green.

Green co-wrote the film with his longtime buddy Derek Harvie, but perhaps bringing in a legitimate screenwriter would have brought some coherency to this mess. The movie casts him as Gord, an aspiring cartoonist who, after failing to achieve his dream, moves back home with his parents. This angers his father, played by Rip Torn, to no end, and an all-out war ensues. Along the way, Gord manages to find time to deliver a baby himself (while cutting the umbilical cord with his teeth), manually arouse both a horse and elephant, and stumble about a highway covered with a deer carcass (he was told to "get inside the animals" if he wanted his cartoon to be a success, you see).

While not a terrible movie per se, Freddy Got Fingered is certainly on the downslope of mediocrity. There are a few chuckles spread out very sparsely (a subplot involving a consistently injured kid stands out), but most intended-to-be-funny moments just come off as pathetic attempts by Green to shock the crowd. Several scenes in the film (particularly the biting-the-umbilical-cord sequence) seem like they would be more at home in a Troma schlock-fest, rather than in a so-called comedy.

Green has surrounded himself with talented co-stars, which only makes him look worse in comparison. Torn, for example, tries his hardest with the material he's got, but really, even an Oscar-winning actor (which Torn is) cannot rise above a script that asks him to deliver a tearful speech about father/son relations while covered in the discharge of an excited elephant.

Freddy Got Fingered likely marks the end of Green's directorial career and for good reason (though it's doubtful that even the most experienced director would have been able to find coherency in the lackluster script). Watch this only if you'd like to see Green lick the exposed bone of his best friend.