These days, Tom Green lives a quiet life on his 150-acre Ontario farm after years in the limelight for his unhinged behavior as a TV personality. At the height of his popularity in 2001, Green managed to secure a $14 million production budget to make Freddy Got Fingered, a critically disdained disasterpiece that now endures as a cult classic of the highest order. I have mixed feelings about Freddy Got Fingered because it is an objectively bad movie for obvious reasons, but it also embodies the “I’m going to do whatever the hell I want and you can’t stop me” mentality that I will always admire.
A Simple Story If You Have The Patience To See It Through
Freddy Got Fingered tells a simple story about Gord (Tom Green), an aspiring animator who sets out to Hollywood to make his father, Jim (Rip Torn), proud. After his first soft rejection, where Hollywood hotshot Dave Davidson (Anthony Michael Hall) tells him he is a great artist but needs to work on concept, Gord, to Jim’s horror, immediately gives up and moves back home.
Gord continues to pursue his art while his sycophantic younger brother, Freddy (Eddie Kaye Thomas), follows in Jim’s footsteps by becoming a company man. Gord’s mother, Julie (Julie Hagerty), never fully shares her feelings about the family dynamic for fear of upsetting her hot-tempered husband.
Along the way, Gord becomes smitten with Betty (Marisa Coughlan), an aspiring rocket scientist and paraplegic who likes to get kinky with a flogging cane in the bedroom. Inspired by Betty’s unwavering commitment to her lifelong dream and her romantic persistence, Gord finds the push to keep going with his art even as everyone else, including his best friend, Darren (Harland Williams), gives up on him.
At its heart, Freddy Got Fingered is a coming-of-age story for Gord, even though he is 28 years old. He wants to pursue his creative passions, win his father’s approval, and rub it in his brother’s face the first chance he gets. I can get behind that.
Context Is Everything
If you think of Freddy Got Fingered as a greatest hits reel of Tom Green’s antics during the peak of his mainstream fame, you will find plenty to enjoy. If you are not a fan of casual bestiality, umbilical impropriety, broken leg bone licking, backwards men, cheese sandwich crashouts, and dancing piano sausages, this one is probably not for you.
Though there is a clear plot in Freddy Got Fingered, it goes off the rails for shock value more often than it should, but that is also part of its charm. For every scene where Tom Green cuts open a dead deer and wears it like a suit, there are moments of genuine frustration that any aspiring creative stuck in a dead end job can relate to if they are willing to look for it.
My favorite sequence comes in the third act when Gord has a full-blown crashout at his sandwich shop job after a customer complains about his cheese sandwich not having enough cheese on it. On the verge of a breakdown, Gord bellows, “Well … we can’t have that … I could lose my job. I could lose all this!” If you have ever worked in food service while waiting for your big break, you know how accurate this scene is on a molecular level.
I once got caught punching a bowl of butter into submission during my last semester of college, working as a line cook while trying to get my band off the ground. Thankfully, my equally struggling coworker snapped me out of it by quoting this very scene. We had a good laugh, and somehow made it through another grueling shift.
Streaming Freddy Got Fingered
While there are genuinely funny, character-driven moments in Freddy Got Fingered, most of the runtime is filled with over-the-top grossout humor that does not serve the story. But given Green’s obvious mission to make the most unhinged comedy ever, I am impressed because the whole thing feels like one giant middle finger to an industry that should have known better. It is one of those movies that is endlessly quotable, but only among the few who secretly celebrate it.
You might not have the stomach for Freddy Got Fingered. If you do, it is streaming on Prime Video and Plex.
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