One for the Team:
Suffering Tom Green So You Won't Have To
by
Ed Owens

The bad news is that he actually did get paid for this.

The conversation as we drove to the multiplex centered on just how we could justify going to see Freddy Got Fingered in the first place. Tom Green touches a nerve in me that I didn't know existed...touches it, strips it, scrapes it with sandpaper, and dances on top of it with the kind of reckless abandon usually only seen in lemmings moments before taking that last step. The feelings brought on by Mr. Barrymore (or is he?!?) generally involve hives, nausea, cold sweat and me in a fetal position on the floor. So why in hell was I going to see Tom's feature film debut?

We came up with three reasons.

1) Morbid curiosity - The picture described in the reviews wasn't pretty. They described a movie so utterly devoid of any redeeming value that its mere existence threatened to undo years of socio-cultural progress. Being a movie whore in almost every sense of the word (I said almost), it's only natural that a movie so unanimously panned would have to be seen to be believed.

You really don't want to know what that is.

2) Professional courtesy - There are certain movies that you simply have to see, regardless of whether or not you're really interested. Everyone I know (myself included) will see Pearl Harbor, not because they genuinely want to necessarily, but because it will be the must-see movie of the summer season. The same sort of logic, twisted though it may be, applied to Freddy Got Fingered...well...

So we really only came up with two reasons, and looking back on them, not very good ones. Regardless, we were committed to seeing it, and that's why at 12:25 on Saturday, April 21st, I found myself saying, "One for Freddy Got Fingered." By around 1:30 on Saturday, April 21st, I found myself saying, "I need to get a refund."

I really don't want to bother with details, mostly because I'm fighting like hell to forget them, but it really is that bad. The "story" (note the quotes) is little more than a line on which Green hangs one surreal gag after another - surreal because there is absolutely no rhyme or reason either to the scenes or the gags themselves. Things happen for no reason, and often to gratuitous extremes. For example. a child running out to greet Green as he returns home essentially headbutts the car and winds up with an extremely bloody mouth - that's not the lead in, that's the gag.. This wouldn't be too much of a problem if the film had some other purpose (see Bunuel's Un Chien Andalou), but to claim that Freddy Got Fingered has some higher-minded purpose is too generous, assuming that there is more going on in its brain-addled head than is evident on any surface.

"Can you tell me again why I'm doing this?"

Everything suffers. Green directs with the same sort of mindless rambling evident in the writing, and the editing appears to have been done with a meat cleaver. Even actors who should be better (and certainly should have known better) seem to have sunk to Green's level.

In fact, there really is nothing good about the movie. I genuinely feel for anyone who actually sat through it in its entirety, especially if they had to (for the first time I can remember, my heart goes out to Ebert). Even though I didn't stay, I still feel like the hour I did suffer more than qualifies me to say a few words against it.

There were twelve people in the theater when I first walked in. I was fascinated by the steady exit of people during the film, finding each person or couple's exit to be more interesting than the film itself. Like clockwork they left, leaving not just because they were offended (I'm sure some were), but because they had tired of the insult. Only four people were left as I made my way towards the auditorium's exit, and the only question I have regarding anything related to the film is how long they stayed.

If there is a god, they didn't stay very long.

CineScene, 2001