The strength of reality humor exemplified by Tom Green is its raw quality. Tom Green’s new movie Freddy Got Fingered (Twentieth Century Fox) attempts to transport that raw humor into a movie world. The fear with a project like this is that a plot line might hamper Green’s ability to amuse with situation comedy.
But Green’s new movie has bigger problems than letting a plot get in the way. Not only is there no semblance of a cohesive plot, but the movie is not funny, either.
A few years ago Green emerged from Canada to take over American television with his unique brand of off-the-wall comedic insanity. After a brief stint in the television spotlight, he soon faded from the airwaves. Now, Green moves to major motion pictures starring in Freddy Got Fingered, a film he wrote and directed.
The film tells the story of Green’s character Gordon Brody, a 28-year-old child who lives with his parents while dreaming of a life as a famous Hollywood cartoon animator. But after his attempt to get his animated characters made into a show fails, Gordon returns home, much to the dismay of his angry father Jim, played by Rip Torn.
Back home, Gordon focuses on skateboarding, trying to create new animated characters and driving his father completely nuts. Jim’s anger and disappointment at his son escalates into all-out rage, and their fighting eventually leads them to therapy. Gordon then accuses his father of sexually abusing his 25-year-old brother Freddy, giving the film its crude title.
The feud between father and son leads them to wit’s end. Nothing is sacred as Gordon commits utter chaos everywhere he goes.
Viewers familiar with Green’s comedy already know what to expect from the film. Much of the comedy is based on Green’s bodily and facial contortions, along with frantic screaming and vocal gyrations.
Other times the movie employs completely tasteless jokes for comedic effect. One particularly cruel joke involves Green posing as a doctor and delivering a baby, cutting the umbilical cord with his teeth and then swinging the newborn in circles, spraying blood all over the hospital ward. Green is later seen wearing the umbilical cord taped to his stomach.
As the title suggests, much of the film’s comedy is sexual in nature. Beginning with Green’s handicapped girlfriend’s strange fetishes, and ending with Green employing a sexually aroused elephant as a cannon aimed at his father, the sexual humor is a sometimes funny, but ultimately disgusting.
Green’s humor fails in part on the silver screen because the subjects of his pranks are scripted actors, rather than innocent bystanders on his TV show who cross his path. Because the bystanders are actors involved in the prank, the value of his zaniness it lost.
The loosely concocted plot serves only as a background for setting Green up in humorous situations, and the film suffers from continuity errors. The audience is often left wondering why scenes are thrown in, and what purpose they serve, only to realize they serve no purpose whatsoever.
Although Green’s actions often seem uninspired and simply annoying during the film, the movie offers a few stand-out moments. Some of Green’s bits and one-liners are witty, and some scenes are riotously amusing. One hilarious scene employs animal genitalia yet again to prove there is no low that Green won’t stoop to.
Freddy Got Fingered is a movie starring a former MTV comedian, and it is clearly geared towards MTV fans with attention spans less than two minutes. In the end, the film is only worth seeing for die-hard fans of Green’s work. But even they might have a little trouble getting past the movie’s gross-out humor and stale jokes.
Freddy Got Fingered is in theaters Friday
