Misunderstood Masterpieces: Freddy Got Fingered
Posted by Will Helm on 04.09.2003
…Or, a Film That Would Make Sigmund Freud Proud
There are times when I wonder just what I’m thinking by doing this. Many times I have ignored what critics have to say about a film and have enjoyed it regardless. Many times I feel critics can be overly vindictive and not give a film any credit. So when it came to reviewing a film called one of the worst in recent memory, one so bad that Roger Ebert said that it was so below the bottom of the barrel that “it didn’t even deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence as the word ‘barrel,’” I said, “What the heck! It can’t be that bad!” I was wrong. It CAN be that bad. Herein, we shall take a voyage into the bizarre and deeply disturbed psyche of Canadian funnyman Tom Green, via his 2001 opus Freddy Got Fingered; I have to warn you, some of you may not come out of this alive.
Case study TK421: Gord Brody (Tom Green). Gord is just an average guy who wants to be an animator. The opening of the film shows off some of his work: the superhero X-Ray Cat, some bananas, and some beavers (no subtext there…no, not at all). First, upon seeing the quality of the artwork, I wondered if I hadn’t rented Crumb instead but, after hearing Gord’s ramblings, I wept inside as I realized it still was Freddy Got Fingered. This all goes on in Gord’s room, which looks suspiciously like Brodie’s room in Mallrats. Of course, confirming my suspicions, Gord then goes skateboarding in the MALL. Anyone who actively rips off Kevin Smith can’t be all bad, right?
It turns out Gord is moving out of Portland, Oregon, to go to Los Angeles to be an animator and work in a cheese sandwich factory. As a token of their pride, Gord’s parents, Jim and Julie (Rip Torn and Julie Hagerty), give him a light blue early-90’s model Chrysler LeBaron. Oh yeah, feel the luxury! We also meet Gord’s younger brother Freddy (Eddie Kaye Thomas), who just stands around in the back and waves. While driving down to L.A., Gord sees a horse get an erection and stops to masturbate it. The horse, I mean. I thought they broached this subject in Clerks…hmmmmm.
Gord gets to L.A., where he pretends(?) to have A.D.D. to break into an animation studio; instead of meeting with an executive, he meets with Drew Barrymore in a pointless cameo. A lesbian innuendo is teased and then Gord leaves to meet with the animation executive, Dave Davidson (Anthony Michael Hall), while dressed as an English bobby. Dave freaks out at first and then tells Gord that he has to get inside the animals to truly draw the animals. Why do I have the feeling that’s not going to be good? Somewhere in all of this, Gord finds time to masturbate a bologna at the cheese sandwich factory. I swear to all of you, I am not making this up!
Fed up with the life of an aspiring animator and cheese sandwich expert, Gord travels back up to Portland. On the way, he finds a dead deer in the middle of the road. He recalls what Dave told him – to “get inside the animals” – and then eviscerates the deer. We get some wonderful spilling of entrails, very reminiscent of Han carving into the tauntaun in The Empire Strikes Back, just much more gruesome. Tom Green is one sick freak. Just to take the sickness up to 11, he puts on the still-bloody deerskin and dances and prances and gets hit by a tractor-trailer. Unfortunately for all of us, he emerges PERFECTLY UNHARMED!!!
Back in Portland, Gord is greeted by Andy, the little neighbor boy, who proceeds to plant his face directly in the door of the LeBaron, with a great deal of blood-loss ensuing. Is it too late to mention that this movie is utterly disgusting? Of course, the sight of Andy’s busted face bleeds into a shot of yummy roast beef. Thank you, Tom Green, for ruining a proud American meal. Gord doesn’t want any of the beef, though; instead, he wants a chicken sandwich, which Jim throws to the dogs after freaking out. Gord goes outside to work on his giant skateboard ramp and get some consoling from his buddy Darren (Harland Williams). After some family arguing that lends credence to the theory that insanity is hereditary, Gord pressures Darren into trying out the ramp. Even though Darren claims his shoes have no sole (and this film has no soul), he tries the ramp anyway and gets a compound fracture in his shin. Of course Gord takes time to play with the protruding bones and I resist the nearly overwhelming urge to vomit.
Luckily, someone is intelligent enough to take Darren to the hospital; sadly, they’re not intelligent enough to prevent Gord from visiting him. First, Gord goes to the nurse’s station and meets up with the very sweet wheelchair-bound nurse/amateur rocket scientist Betty (Marisa Coughlan), who so becomes quickly enamored with our goofy protagonist. When Gord goes to meet his friend, it turns out that, in a confounding error in logic and planning, Darren is rooming with two Native American women and a very irritable pregnant woman. As if on cue, the pregnant lady goes into labor and, with no one around to deliver the baby (even though a hospital is generally filled with capable nurses and doctors), a Fellini film breaks out, as the Native American women start banging on drums and Darren yammers on and on and Gord goes into hysterics. I’m very frightened by what could happen here…if he starts playing with the placenta, I’m going to get a drink. Oh, whew, lucky me; he just delivers the baby, bites the umbilical cord, and swings the baby around and around like a bullroarer to get it crying. No drinking…yet. Gord is WISELY banned from the hospital, though why they didn’t put him into the mental ward escapes me.
In a development which continues to astound me, Gord has a date with Betty. He goes over her house, which is festooned with all sorts of rockets and such. Methinks someone has a bit of a phallic fixation. And it’s not just Betty. Confirming my suspicions yet again, Betty uses a double entendre-laced metaphor for her love of rockets. She then has Gord whip her unfeeling legs with a bamboo cane. Betty’s hardcore! She repays Gord’s Singapore-style lovin’ with some oral sex, but not before discovering that Gord has an umbilical cord duct-taped to his abdomen. Betty…honestly…you CAN do better. You’re a sweet, intelligent, attractive young woman. You shouldn’t let your handicap hold you back. Why, Betty…why? Or, more appropriately…why movie, why?!?
In a turn that surprises no one, Gord’s brother Freddy is a successful young something-or-other. I don’t remember if they ever mention what he does for a living, but he’s successful because he wears a suit. Oh yeah. Instead of joining Freddy in the working world, Gord takes a shower dressed in full scuba gear and imagines that soap-on-a-rope is treasure. With all the bizarre psychoses here, I would think that the kind of soap you can drop is more of a treasure to these people. More on that later. Also, what in the world is someone doing with scuba gear in PORTLAND?!? I mean, it’s Oregon, not the Great Barrier Reef or something like that. What are you going to find…a couple sunken fishing boats? A giant oyster? Something don’t make sense here. After getting thrown through a plate-glass shower door, Gord decides to look for a job. He dresses up as the “Backwards Man,” with an entire suit on backwards, and Kriss Kross is not amused. Something tells me that this Tom Green individual is not playing with a full deck. Just a hunch.
It turns out that Gord’s relationship with Betty makes him feel like a total slut due to the massive amount of oral sex he has been receiving. He pressures Betty into going out to dinner with him…to the same restaurant that his parents and Andy and his dad are at as well. It’s Andy’s birthday, but I have to wonder just what kind of kid wants to go to a fancy French restaurant for his birthday. Just a wee bit suspect there. Anyway, surprising no one, Jim exposes Gord as a worthless, unemployed son and then spanks him, Andy starts crying, and Gord retaliates by fiddling and squirting people with bar-guns. He gets arrested. I guess they don’t take kindly to fiddle-smashing and squirt-gun-commandeering in Portland.
Now this is where the movie really starts to get strange. Betty bails Gord out of jail and gives him some creative advice. Somehow this leads to Gord creating an elaborate pulley system so that he can eat sausages while playing a keyboard while wearing steaks on his head. Read that sentence repeatedly until you fully understand. Of course it doesn’t help that Gord starts singing “daddy, would you like some sausage” when Jim gets home. Someone really should investigate the Green household. Again, just a thought. Jim gets revenge by smashing Gord’s skateboard ramp, so Gord gets more revenge by telling Julie (or himself in the first person) to go have sex with strangers. Somehow this leads to family therapy, where Gord accuses Jim of molesting Freddy and Freud goes out the window. Literally.
Freddy gets kidnapped by a psychiatrist and a cop and sent to the “Institute for Sexual Molested Children.” Perhaps I neglected to mention that Freddy is 25. It really doesn’t matter, honestly. Gord, happy with his ultimate revenge, gets drunk and experiences a fit of paranoia-induced inspiration. He’s rudely interrupted by Jim, who drops trou and tells Gord to f*** him. Just what I needed to see…Rip Torn’s ass. It’s a wonder my eyes haven’t burst into flames by now or that I’ve gone blind because my eyes have just given up. The possibility of incestuous anal sex leads Julie to leave Jim.
Gord meets up with Betty, who is working on her rocket-powered wheelchair (sounds like something from Speed Racer). Gord considers giving up (please, please, please) his dreams (dammit) as he thinks Betty should and then goes off to rage against a cheese sandwich. Of course he finds time to imply anal penetration with a cheese sandwich as well. Why does that not surprise me? Unfortunately, it turns out that Betty’s wheelchair works, which emboldens Gord to follow his dream yet again. Why, Betty…why?!?
Back in L.A., Gord runs through the animation studio yet again, where, surprisingly, everyone remembers him. “Everyone” being the security guy and Dave Davidson. But that’s enough, isn’t it? Anyhow, Gord begins a bizarre pitch, Jim busts up Dave’s office in a rage, and Dave gives Gord $1,000,000 for the cartoon. We shift to the cartoon, which, appropriately, is a rambling mess and a perfect microcosm of the movie as a whole. Now, if they only could have made the movie as long as the cartoon, everything would have been fine.
Gord uses his newly acquired riches to visit Betty, whose building just happens to have handicapped access to the rooftop helipad. He then dresses like Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs, shoots Jim with a tranquilizer dart, and has the house moved to Pakistan. Again, read that last sentence repeatedly until it sinks in. An angry Jim chases Gord through the desert until Gord masturbates an elephant and stuns Jim with a shower of pachyderm semen. Jim and Gord bond and are kidnapped into white slavery, where they take time to rip off The Deer Hunter. Remember, kids: Russian roulette is funny. While Julie has an affair with Shaquille O’Neal, Gord and Jim return to Portland dressed like Jesus impersonators. Andy gets chopped up by a propeller and the film ends. Oh, and the outtakes during the credits make more sense than the film. And I’m going to go and get that drink now.
Hello, dear readers…my name is Will Helm and I am about to testify. Some have said that to truly witness God you have to see Hell. Well, I have seen Hell and it is called Freddy Got Fingered. Never in my life have I seen something so grotesque. Never in my life have I seen one man’s disturbing psychoses and neuroses on display. Most frightening of all, I found myself laughing on occasion. Not from the humor, oh no…but from the sheer absurdity of it all. Perhaps this film is a microcosm of life: it’s all just pop-culture references and dick jokes. Promise me, dear readers, that you will never ever ever ever ever ever see this film. It is the least you can do to calm a poor man’s soul. Now I have to go spend some time with my friends Jim, Jack, and Johnnie.
