Hot on the heels of such hilarious gags as getting testicular cancer and marrying Drew Barrymore, MTV’s Tom Green has a movie. That means your attention-seeking little brother with a booger on his finger will have to wait until the market’s right again.
“Freddy Got Fingered” is Green’s first foray as feature writer/director/leading man. And while most wouldn’t hesitate to call the film “bad,” “offensive” or just “awful,” it’s silly enough to get away with it all.
Those unfamiliar with Green’s TV antics probably won’t be seeing “Freddy Got Fingered” anyway.
But his cable-access show turned MTV staple “The Tom Green Show” is infamous for pulling pranks on unsuspecting people on the street, like interviewing them with poo on the microphone.
No such unscripted antics appear here. Instead, “Freddy Got Fingered” concerns the adventures of Gord, a 28-year-old who acts surprisingly like a 13-year-old. When his dreams of becoming a professional animator are smashed, he quits his job at a cheese factory and moves in his parents’ basement.
The plot pretty much stops there, giving Gord (Green) plenty of screen time to irritate his father (Rip Torn), defile farm animals, and generally act like an imbisule. There’s also a subplot concerning Gord’s younger and more responsible brother Freddy (Eddie Kaye Thomas), which eventually results in the film’s title.
Much of the film’s humor comes from Green’s surreal type of performance art, the kind he exhibited in his smash hit single “The Bum Bum Song.” Priceless stuff like the “Backwards Man” gag and the “Daddy, Would You Like Some Sausage?” song are so bloatedly juvenile that one wonders if we’re supposed to laugh with Green, or at him.
The rest of the jokes consist of gross-out comedy. Gord, at an animation producer’s suggestion to “get inside the animal,” cuts open a dead deer and wears it as a headdress. Later, Gord delivers a child, then proceeds to wave it around the hospital by the umbilical cord.
But in terms of gross-out humor, Green shows slightly more class than your average David Spade or Farrelly brother.
At one point, Gord’s friend Darren (Harland Williams) incurs a fracture from a skateboarding accident. Whereas the Adam Sandlers of the world would be content to let the camera rest on the broken, bloody bone, Green goes and licks the marrow.
As a director, Green is able to carry his demented - often frightening - vision throughout the film. Having too much recognition to annoy the general public one-on-one, he instead chooses to pulverize the TV viewing audience.
Like it or not, we’re all the richer for his art.
