Film

Freddy Got Fingered (2001)

Director: Tom Green

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

On the face of it another 'triumph of the dunderhead' gross-out to rank with Dumb & Dumber's‚ dumbest seed, Canadian 'comic' Green's self-directed goof-off is something else: rarely ha-ha funny, just jaw-droppingly unhinged. We're talking horse's cock ogling, elephant ejacute hose-downs, clambering around inside a dead deer, severing an umbilical cord by one's teeth - never have a hero's uncomprehending parents seemed so sympathetic. Rip Torn in fact looks thoroughly humiliated (he even has to moon the camera) as Mr Brody, irascible father of Green's gormless wannabe animator Gord, who's waited until his 29th year to leave the family nest and chance his hand in Hollywood. One stint in a sandwich factory and one hatcheted job-pitch later and he's back home, to Brody Sr's evident disgust. Whereupon Gord lets drop the allegation that dad has molested Gord's 25-year-old brother (the Freddy of the title), and brings down the law on both relatives' backs. But by this point he's dating a paraplegic amateur rocket scientist with a kink for having her ankles beaten with a bamboo stick. Any notion of taste is way out of sight, but what's weirder is how ingenuous Green's schtick comes over. The berserk 'follow your heart' moral seems genuinely heartfelt, and the star's dedication to his galling brand of humour has, well, real spunk.

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