Freddy Got Fingered is a 2001 American surreal black comedy film directed by Tom Green and written by Green and Derek Harvie. The film stars Green alongside Rip Torn, Marisa Coughlan, Eddie Kaye Thomas and Julie Hagerty. The plot follows a childish slacker who wishes to become a professional cartoonist while dealing with his abusive father's behavior. The title of the film refers to a plot point where Green's character falsely accuses his father of sexually abusing his brother, the eponymous Freddy.
The film also contained animated sequences by Chris Prynoski and his animation studio Titmouse Productions. Before release, the film was moderately toned down to secure an R-rating from the MPAA after the film received an NC-17, per request from the studio. A scene that featured an alternative ending to the film was released as an extra on the film's DVD as a result.
Released in the United States on April 20, 2001 by 20th Century Fox, the film was overwhelmingly panned by critics at the time, with many complaints about its gross-out humor. Some also referred to it as one of the worst films of all time. While initially a box-office flop, grossing $14.3 million against its $14 million budget, it later became profitable after its release on home video. It received five Golden Raspberry Awards of its eight nominations, as well as a Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association Award for Worst Picture. Despite the film's poor initial reception, it has since garnered some positive critical re-evaluation, as well as a cult following.
Plot Unemployed 28-year-old cartoonist Gordon "Gord" Brody leaves his parents' home in Portland, Oregon, to pursue his lifelong ambition of obtaining a contract for an animated television series. His parents, Jim and Julie, give him a Chrysler LeBaron which he drives to Los Angeles and starts work at a cheese sandwich factory to make money. Gord shows his drawings to Dave Davidson, the CEO of a major animation studio; Davidson commends the artwork but calls the concepts depicted, including a vigilante "X-Ray Cat", nonsensical. Disheartened, Gord quits his job and returns to his parents.
Jim constantly insults and belittles Gord following his return, telling him to forget about being an animator and "get a job". When Gord pressures his friend Darren into skating on a wooden half-pipe he has built outside the Brody home, Darren falls and breaks his leg. At the hospital, Gord impersonates a doctor, delivers a baby, and meets an attractive nurse in a wheelchair named Betty. Gord visits Betty at her home, where she shows him the protoype rocket-powered wheelchair she is working on. Betty initiates a romantic encounter with Gord, and persuades him to beat her legs with a cane for masochistic pleasure. She offers to perform fellatio on him, but he declines and leaves, stating they're moving too fast.
Gord lies to his father that he has got a job in the computer industry. While his father thinks he is at work, Gord takes Betty out to a restaurant. However, Jim encounters him at the restaurant and disparages Gord's deception and laziness along with Betty's disability. After a fight in the restaurant, Gord is arrested and Betty bails him out. Following her advice, Gord attempts to continue drawing; however, he gets into an argument with Jim, who then smashes Gord's half-pipe. Gord and his parents then go to a family therapy session, where Gord falsely accuses his father of fingering Gord's younger brother, Freddy.
The 25-year-old Freddy is sent to a home for sexually molested children despite clearly being an adult. Julie, fed up with Jim's real and perceived behavior, leaves Jim and ends up dating the basketball player Shaquille O'Neal. While in a drunken stupor, Jim tells Gord how much of a disappointment he is to him. Affected by his father's words, Gord decides to abandon his aspirations to be a cartoonist and gets a job at a local sandwich shop.
After seeing a television news report on Betty's successful rocket-powered wheelchair, Gord is inspired to pursue his dreams once again. He returns to Hollywood with a concept based on his relationship with his father: an adult animated series called Zebras in America. Jim follows Gord there after threatening Darren into revealing his whereabouts. While Gord is pitching the show to Davidson, Jim bursts in and trashes Davidson's office.
Thinking Jim's actions are part of Gord's pitch, Davidson greenlights Zebras in America and gives Gord a million-dollar check. Gord spends a quarter of that money on an elaborate thank you to Betty for inspiring him, using a helicopter to deliver jewels to her. She thanks him but says she really only wants to perform fellatio on him. Gord spends the remainder of his windfall to relocate part of the Brody house to Pakistan with his father inside, unconscious—a response to Jim's earlier put-down that "If this were Pakistan, you would have been sewing soccer balls when you were four years old!". A furious Jim chases Gord into a tent, where Gord masturbates a bull elephant and causes it to spray his father with semen.
Gord and Jim soon come to terms, but are then abducted and held hostage. The kidnapping becomes a news item, as Gord's series has already become popular. After 18 months in captivity, Gord and Jim return to the United States, where a huge crowd—including Betty, Darren, and a protestor holding a sign asking “When the fuck is this movie going to end?”—welcomes them home.
Cast
Tom Green as Gordon "Gord" Brody, a childish 28-year-old slacker cartoonist who dreams of having his own cartoon show. Rip Torn as James “Jim” Brody, Gord's short-tempered, blue-collar father who frequently clashes with Gord in response to his slacking and clowning. Marisa Coughlan as Betty Menger, Gord's masochist love interest who dreams of developing a rocket-powered wheelchair. Eddie Kaye Thomas as Freddy Brody, Gord's responsible younger brother who works at a bank. Harland Williams as Darren, Gord's bank teller friend. Anthony Michael Hall as Dave Davidson, the head of Radioactive Animation Studios, who Gord seeks to pitch his cartoons to. Julie Hagerty as Julie Brody, Gord's mild-mannered mother. Drew Barrymore as Davidson's receptionist Shaquille O'Neal as himself Jackson Davies as Mr. Malloy, the Brodys' next-door neighbor. Connor Widdows as Andy Malloy, the accident-prone son of Mr. Malloy who is repeatedly injured during the film as part of a running gag Lorena Gale as Psychiatrist/Social worker Noel Fisher as Pimply manager Stephen Tobolowsky (uncredited) as Uncle Neil Joe Flaherty (uncredited) as William
Production Principal photography took place from August to October 2000, and was mostly shot in Vancouver, while some scenes were shot in Santa Monica, California.
Chris Prynoski, former Beavis and Butt-Head and Daria animator, produced the "Zebras in America" animation segment as the first project for his company, Titmouse Productions.
The theatrical release for the film is 87 minutes and it was received an R rating by the Motion Picture Association of America following requested cuts to tone it down from an NC-17, a rating that Tom Green described as "like porn with murder." As an extra on the DVD release, Green also included a version of the ending, where a small child character gets sliced by the airplane propeller, which he had edited to secure an R rating with a last-minute added ADR dub for a theatrical release. The PG-rated cut of Freddy Got Fingered is only three minutes long with a comedic voiceover. Some footage was leaked by the Newgrounds website two weeks before release.Freddie Got Fingered Gets Fingered- Website Won't Name Names, cinema.com. Tom Fulp, owner of Newgrounds, confirmed during that same time that the leak was a marketing stunt.
Music
The music score was composed by Mike Simpson of the electronic band Dust Brothers, who had previously scored other films such as the 1999 film Fight Club and the 2000 comedy film Road Trip, the latter in which Tom Green also acted. Simpson would go on to collaborate with Green on Tom Green's House Tonight. The soundtrack was released on April 17, 2001 by Restless Records and had consisted of mostly punk rock, hardcore punk and electronic music.
Some of the songs featured in the film, but not on the official soundtrack include "I Just Wanna Love U (Give It 2 Me)" by JAY-Z, "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing (In Perfect Harmony)" by The New Seekers, "I've Gotta Be Me" by Sammy Davis Jr., and "The Real Slim Shady" by Eminem.
Release The film had its theatrical release in the United States and Canada on April 20, 2001 by 20th Century Fox. It was also theatrically released in France on May 1, 2002.
Home media The film was released on VHS and DVD by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment on October 23, 2001. Despite its notorious failure at the box office, it did eventually turn a profit from DVD sales earning its cult status. The film earned $24,300,000 from DVD sales, and was among the top 50 weekly DVD rentals chart. Green has stated in a few interviews in 2010 that DVD sales have been growing many years later and that there was a cult following.
Reception
Box office On a budget of $14 million, Freddy Got Fingered grossed $14,254,993 domestically and $78,259 overseas for a worldwide total of $14,333,252, making it initially a commercial failure. In a 2017 interview, Green stated that the box office receipts for the film did not reflect the actual attendance, as he thinks that moviegoers under the age of 17 bought tickets to Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles and then snuck into the theater showing his film.
Critical response
Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the a score of 13 out of 100, based on 25 critics, indicating "overwhelming dislike". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C−" on an A+ to F scale.
CNN's Paul Clinton called it "quite simply the worst movie ever released by a major studio in Hollywood history" and listed the running time as "87 awful minutes."Clinton, Paul (April 19, 2001). "'Freddy Got Fingered' is a bad, bad film: Gross, stupid, sick. And that's being kind" . CNN. Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert gave the film a rare zero-star rating and listed it as one of his most hated films of all time, and described the film thus: "This movie doesn't scrape the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn't the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn't below the bottom of the barrel. This movie doesn't deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence with barrels. […] The day may come when Freddy Got Fingered is seen as a milestone of neo-surrealism. The day may never come when it is seen as funny."
Along with Ebert, his At the Movies co-host, Richard Roeper, called it "horrible" and expressed the view that Green was a poor comedian, saying that "he should be flipping burgers somewhere". Roeper was also offended by the numerous "gross-out" gags. In 2003, Roeper put it on his list of his forty least favorite films of all time to that point, reiterating his dislike of Green's comedy in general.
Film critic Leonard Maltin gave Freddy Got Fingered a "BOMB" rating in his book Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide. He expressed views of the film similar to those of Ebert and Roeper: "Instantly notorious word-of-mouth debacle became the poster child for all that's wrong with movie comedy. […] Gags include the maiming of an innocent child and a newborn spun around in the air by its umbilical cord—compounded by the almost unimaginable ineptitude with which they're executed."
In 2017, the film critic of The Guardian, Peter Bradshaw, cited it as the worst film he had ever seen. Likewise, James Berardinelli, who had given the film a zero-star rating upon its release and stated that he had "gotten better entertainment value from a colonoscopy," said in 2008 that it was his least favourite film of all time.