Freddy Got Fingered - re:View

well Mike we're here to talk about the 2001 comedy Freddy got fingered a film that has been mostly forgotten and holds no cultural impact whatsoever you could say it was the second worst thing to happen in 2001 [Music] well it's time to talk about Freddy got fingered a movie is bound to happen eventually right it's going to happen yeah um a movie that I used to both love and hate simultaneously but upon re-watching it I have a whole new perspective on this film which I'll share with you okay okay all right and our audience great but J I think we need to talk about who Tom Green is to our audience who may not be familiar yes yeah there's we have to put this movie into context because if you were not between the ages of like 16 and 23 in the year 1999 Tom Green means absolutely nothing to you [Applause] he was super super popular for just that brief window to the point where it's almost I would almost call it a fad unless though then someone who was famous and then there their fame kind of died out I he had his show in Canada public access sure I think so just some sort of local comedy channel n oh yeah Glenn hump leg a name I have not thought about since 2001 but yeah they doing goofy comedy stuff very basically just like a celebration of stupidity just unbridled unapologetic stupidity [Music] they're like the Eric Andre show at all I would say the things like like Tim and Eric or especially jackass like came out after that we're all sort of it all kind of started with Tom gur yeah yeah and so MTV said what's this this crazy let's give him the show and then there's the famous tape the VHS tape that's green that oh yeah which I think everyone had everyone had that tape yeah which was a lot of stuff from his Canadian days and he did a lot of man-on-the-street stuff you're my mom no not your mother free Billy Eichner miss for a dollar name three white people go three white people yeah oh yeah Tom Green is a trailblazer for annoying comedy like going around on the street annoying people why won't you ask me on court he had his show a peak movie he married drew Barrymore um he was in the Charlie's Angels movie as a cameo yeah and then Huebel well and then it was he was a supporting role in the movie road trip which is one of those terrible early 2000s comedies and that was sorry he was like the John Belushi of that or he's like a supporting character but everybody liked him in it and so then the the Hollywood execs came Colin they're like we don't we don't understand you but clearly the kids like you give you a movie do whatever you want and the results are Fred got fingered yeah I mean we could do a whole show on Tom Green's career the the anomaly that it is yeah the fascinating anomaly that it is because it's not just I'm a comedian I'm doing this like I said an had with Andy Kaufman kind of vibe to it where it's like what are you doing what is this real is this not yeah doing this and Freddy got fingered falls into that category because this after watching it Freddy got fingered is both awkward uncomfortable terrible but at the same time it's hilarious to where I left but I can and I can't stop laughing and I can't breathe well is that more like it almost feels like the movie itself is the joke well yeah that's that's another face you about today yeah Jay is the vibe I get from the movie is and I don't know if this is intentional or not it is a man who lost a bet and the bet was you have to make a Hollywood movie yeah where he's almost forced to do it and he doesn't want to but let's the other going back to context the other thing you have to keep in mind is when this movie came out which was the height of the late 90s early 2000s gross-out comedies which kind of drew into popularity with like the Farrelly Brothers there's something about Mary and then there was all the imitations of that's you had like American Pie and then and then it started to go down to like the ones that nobody remembers anymore like say it isn't so with Heather Graham and Tom cats all these terrible terrible gross-out comedy there's a David Spade wonderful dog oh yeah that's directly just stealing from Something About Mary with the cute little dog and I think that's that the gross-out comedy fad is part of the reason why a lot of stuff slip past studio executives oh yeah I kind of touch old old guys who are just like people like this gross stuff he's putting a deer carcass on him yeah and licking the exposed broken bone okay well that's that's a case of lots of people like the Farrelly Brothers formula was doing these kind of outrageous gross out things mixed with sentimentality and all the knockoffs of that tried to replicate that and did it terribly and the Freddy got fingered movie is like taking those two extremes the sentimental stuff and the gross out stuff as far as possible to the point of absurdity yeah he takes I mean the story is very simple almost to the point of being satirical Tom Green plays Gord Gordy good a man who wants to draw cartoons he's got the dream and he's got the disapproving father not stupid they're not stupid he wants to live out his dream but Gord is the most unlikable protagonist that you could possibly imagine he's selfish he's stupid and he's insane and you don't you don't care like this the the family gives him a car he has he has a younger brother titular younger brother Freddy Gord gets a little barren and I don't that's because they love me more than they love you no no no they don't I only see one LeBaron Freddy I only see one I don't see two LeBaron Gord gets all the attention then they give him a car to drive off to LA default to follow his dreams I'm gonna make you so proud made you daddy proud proud [Music] right right after this this overly phony sentimental moment with his dad or they just keep saying the word proud over and over and over you make your daddy proud I'm gonna make you proud daddy I'm gonna make you so proud make your daddy proud you're gonna be so proud brown proud we need to extrapolate on that scene though because it's so it's so convoluted and I wonder how much of it is intentional which is Gord he lives at home with his parents he lives in their basement so at the beginning of the movie it's him like laughing at his own cartoons which almost feels kind of self reflexive just in a room by himself laughing at his own stupidity so he's at home where his parents live he leaves home on his skateboard to meet his parents at the bus station to get on a bus to Los Angeles I just parents bought the ticket for my bus is about to leave so I'm gonna get on it and I'm gonna leave on it wait you're not taking that bus to Los Angeles Los Angeles I don't know why he didn't just go there with his parents because they're going to the same place from the same place and then they so they give him his ticket and he's about to get on the bus and they say wait we bought you a car it's like why didn't you just give him the car if the house like nothing about it makes any sons and I'm wondering how much of that is intentional because I don't think and that's the thing and talking about like this movie and like the weirdness of it and it kind of breaking down the formula of these kind of late early 2000s comedies like I don't know how clever town green actually is it's based on all evidence of interviews and material related to them I don't think he's that clever I think a lot of this movie is unintentionally interesting I'm gonna say the opposite no I'm gonna say two words inclusivity writer I mean I'm sorry secret genius because I don't think I can give him that much credit there are I noticed many meta moments movie oh yeah there there's a big one at the end Tom Green's goal is to get a cartoon the the half zebra half human yeah cartoon he gets it made or he convinces the the cartoon executive any michael hall yeah that this is this is my idea and he's like I'm just gonna this idea is great I wasn't even thinking about writing a check today but with that kind of creativity I'm completely comfortable green-lighting this [ __ ] project I'm gonna write you a check right now partner fur I don't know how's a 1 million dollar sound to you huh Tom Green takes that check and he spends two hundred thousand dollars on jewels the rest of the check he spends on this elaborate thing to to cut part of his parents house out and put it on top of a truck in Pakistan yes and smash it and then there's a moment where he's explaining to the construction guy the construction foreman I got a check for a million dollars and he's talking about the movie because I had a million dollars okay and there's been $150,000 on the jewels okay and they spent $100,000 I rented a helicopter okay then you had the $750,000 that's all my money that's all my money gone there's a million dollars gone easy come easy go he's talking about the budget for the movie I am making fun of the fact that someone gave him a million dollars yeah a million dollars to deuce to create something with it and he turned it into crap okay so let me get this right you want to just barge in a restaurant dressed like a [ __ ] English Bobby and expect someone to give you a TV show I don't know yeah well there's another moment like that that's a little more blatant early on which is he when he goes to LA he confronts Anthony Michael Hall who's this cartoon channel executive or whatever he's supposed to be and they're outside of this restaurant where he confronts him and Anthony Michael Hall is looking at his drawings the drawings are pretty good but it doesn't make any sense okay it's [ __ ] stupid okay what you need here is elevation okay there actually has to be something that happens that's actually funny what the [ __ ] is happening here which I have to imagine that someone involved with the production of the movie saying that to Tom Green oh yeah it may even be because there was originally another director attached to it who left's not because of like the extreme gross-out stuff but he left specifically over the the structure of the story and the lack of characters and then Tom Green just took over his directors so it's almost like it almost feels like that's probably verbatim what that director was saying to Tom Green mm-hm it's like the that when the Jerky Boys movie came out no one's that before I probably or even liked the Garbage Pail Kids movie yeah yeah but when you have a concept and then like the Jerky Boys movie is the perfect example you have a concept that or you know then Tom Green's case of persona that you said oh how do we make a movie from this yeah well here's how you structure it the Jerky Boys they make prank phone calls they get into a wacky situation with the mob because a prank phone calls yes yeah and so Tom Green is like he took that and he made this structure and he almost made fun of that yeah well it does take the formula of I mean it feels in a couple of tweaks here and there changing the humor and you would have a typical like Adam Sandler vehicle the the underdog the the the you know the lovable loser but of course the lovable loser in this case is not lovable at all he's actually psychotic but I think a problem for me is that there's a lack of consistency there's some scenes where I think you're supposed to genuinely be sympathetic towards him nothing I've always been nothing anywhere where it doesn't feel like they're doing it in an intentionally phony way but then other scenes cease like completely psychotic III had no likability for his character and I'm okay with that okay I mean like okay there there there are many many many funny moments there's a there's a few like legitimately funny comedy movie type moments but a lot of it is is funny and and kind of a detached way or you have to think about like he put this in a studio film right a studio gave him money and he intentionally sabotaged it because you have like the after that opening scene where he get he's going to Los Angeles for no reason he sees a horse get an erection [Applause] [Music] and he jumps out of the car and just starts jerking off the horse and then the scene cuts and we move on and it has nothing to do with anything pays off in the end I guess it does kind of pay off of the dad that's true but but it's not like it's braces dead of elephant pays off in the stupidest way but like the fact that it just completely cuts from that and then the movie just goes on and you're like wait what like there's no setup there's no payoff it's the exact opposite of a typical kind of structured comedic scene right I mean I had that feeling like um Todd you're supposed to do something weird now has your Tom green and you do weird well that's why I think a lot of it is unintentional is like to me like I don't think Tom Green is that clever I think it is just he came up with a series of wacky things you can do in a movie and then dropped it into this very traditional kind of mainstream comedy movie structure but then there are other moments where you feel like he's intentionally sabotaging the movie like there's a part once he gets to LA he goes to the offices of the animation studio and he kind of barges in there's a cameo by his then wife through Barrymore but there's one close-up of drew Barrymore in that sequence where the color timing is completely off his wife is dead and I was thinking of like the the Andy Kaufman thing where he had his TV special I mean he intentionally [ __ ] with the vertical hold is that because I've never seen that in a movie where the color timing isn't that wrong I was like did he just in in the editing process did he say hey just make this shot blue like it's so weird yeah [Music] let's talk about Rip Torn the great Rip Torn who once in real life got so drunk that he thought a bank was his house my favorite torn story yeah yeah it's so drunk he tried to break into a bank because he thought it was the house that he lived in yeah rip rip torn god bless them the great the great Rip Torn the [ __ ] this is constant like mumbling anger damn roast beef or you can go to bed it's so amazing how when he when he swears at Tom green like the shower scene when Tom Green is wearing a scuba gear in the shower what the [ __ ] are you doing which at the tail end of that scene I noticed when Rip Torn this is another lake is this an intentional error Rip Torn is walking out of the shot and you start to see like the shadow with a camera on him like the camera was like right because it's a small bathroom and you see him like move to get like Oh out of the way the camera and is like did they just leave that in because Tom Green thought it was funny or is he just a shitty filmmaker like I don't know about that well I don't think there's like that ending after glory jerks off an elephant and sprays his father with elephant come yes they Lang in the desert and they have that that moment or anything I just I just wanted you to respect me you and I never really see eye to eye but I learned something dogs say that not just how to whack off an elephant I learned to believe in myself I mean it's so so on the nose to where it's just like a satire it's making fun of the arc yeah the the father the father character doesn't believe in the son he wants him to get a job his stupid little drawings or never got about to nothing not the end you did all this who made all this money and do all this with your little doodle sniff I want you to be proud in an Adam Sandler movie you would they would expect you to take that emotional moment serious yes and and it would be acted differently Tom Green is like this she's a dad he looks like a crazy person yes any and so he knows probably just to be like not acted that way but it's almost like he's mocking the film itself it's like and then I think now we need to talk about the love interest because that that to me is just [ __ ] bizarre [Music] well it's that's an element of the movie that feels like a direct like that's the type of thing you would see in a Farrelly Brothers movie only in a Farrelly Brothers movie they would give that character some character yeah like here she's just in a wheelchair and she likes to be canes and she exists solely to give Tom Green [ __ ] like it almost feels like a and again I don't think this is intentional but it feels like a parody of the generic love interest yeah yeah yeah type of movie well you're forgetting one small element is that she has a dream she's an amateur rocket scientist yes she has a dream to have a rocket-propelled wheelchair right which which is a plot point because she achieves the dream and I and that guy that gives him the motivation to to go back and try again with his drawings right he's at his lowest point I mean it's a perfectly structured script but then there's that moment at the end like he has all his money right his budget his check yes and in with his money he pays for a helicopter to fly by her house and she uses on the roof and then they have their moment he's like he's like I have all this money now I made it my drawings were a success and she's like have a bag of jewels for you their jewels Betty their jewels care about jewels I just wanna I just want a second [ __ ] she says it again yeah wanna stay home the second time she says it it's either the actress deeply embarrassed about the line or her holding back laughter and I cannot tell I'll say I always took it as her supposed to be like this is the emotional where she's like getting like choked up in the movie yes yeah oh you're talking about in the reality of the film in the reality of the film either the actress is just completely ashamed and annoyed or she cannot stop laughing yeah and and one side is sick uncomfortable and awful and the other side is she's in on the joke sure and I'm not sure which one it is because I could see him unsettling your line is I just want to suck your [ __ ] it's such a terrible line yeah to make that actress say but if the intention is to it's a parody how useless the female love interest in these movies are and she gets it that yeah she gets it and it's funny well the thing is though when you stand back and look at it as a whole it is a structured like gross out comedy where you have the down-and-out hero whose father disapproves he has a love interest the arc is he wants to become a famous cartoonist yeah it has all those points and so to me it just smacks of satire yes max is making fun of those kinds of movies because if if you said Tom Green here just make a movie it probably would just be nonsense so whether or not someone came in and said you got to do this this and this and then I'll do that I'll do that but I'm gonna do it like this and like the scene you referenced where the guys like you need structure they need a character you need some stuff to happen it can't just be nonsense which is drawings where nonsense a magic not magic cat x-ray K X ray cat yeah hi hi hi hi I'm x-ray cat but I can only see through wooden doors can only see through wood doors in there well what's the point of x-ray Kentwood then what is he this is our villain you know and he's the the guys trying to make sense of it but it's just you can't it's like Tom Green resisting the structure and making fun of the structure and I think that's exemplified in the opening scene when Tom Green takes a skateboard through the shopping mall okay it's basically life your shopping mall is a structured environment I am a man on a skateboard that does not belong in your structured world oh that's fair I think it's symbolic and then it's metaphorical I was gonna say Tom Green just thought it would be cool to ride a skateboard through a mall see we look at this film in a different light Jay well well speaking of the the parody aspects and paradeen tropes there's the the running gag with the next-door neighbor boy Andy would you like a piece of cake for dessert of course you can have a piece of cake oh he's constantly getting injured in a dumb slapstick comedy you know you might have that character that's like constantly getting beat up but there's never any consequences to that it's just oh he gets hit in the head and ha ha ha and then the scene goes on in a typical movie that's what happens the first time we see this [ __ ] kid at this movie he trips and hits his head on the side of Gords door [Music] and it is so uncomfortable that's the moment cuz I saw this movie in the theater opening weekend and that's the moment where the entire theater turned on the film the entire audience turned on the movie which made it funnier to me and then it happens again later where he actually gets a baseball to the face and like his teeth are falling out that yeah that that's a very clear parody of the type of like running gag of like this slapstick side character yes and to add to my case this film's brilliant is the you have that kid getting injured yeah but at the end of the film he walks into a carefully propeller and gets obliterated [Applause] there's a point that we I know we've told you about where that feels like a studio note where they're like you can't [ __ ] kill the kid that'll turn to nc-17 yeah so you have to have a TR add some voiceover he says he's okay as if that makes it better like it saved them from getting an nc-17 rating does it really make that much of a difference I mean you still have a crowd of people getting doused in the blood of a small child that has been chopped up in propeller play to me it ruins it I mean obviously because Tom Green's intention was yes this is a running gag where the kid keeps getting injured yeah in violent realistic way yes and then at and then at the end you don't expect him to become obliterated the entire crowd is just covered in the little kid guts and boy and that's how you're moving yeah yeah I just remembered my other meta moment Dougie bruised further proves my case when Tom Green tracks on Anthony Michael Hall at the diner the restaurant yeah which i think is called like like fancy pants or it has some kind of like yeah this is on the nose name yeah I'm like inexplicably sitting a random extra sitting at one of the tables who has a cast on with a middle finger sticking up really literally giving the middle finger to the audience I never noticed that I noticed that and it's and it's like okay he's literally flipping off the audience yeah it's a character with the cast on and it's stuck like this and I could have got seen but it's not a character that's introduced or anything it's just random it's it's interesting it's what they call an easter egg so I think Tom Green did not want to make a movie he was told to make a movie now and he said okay I'm gonna make a movie and I'm just gonna make it [ __ ] awful yeah well that that guy the cast of the middle finger could have been like something Tom Green wanted to put in the background just to see if anyone when we're watching dailies would notice and there's a weird bit of ADR in the famous hospital bedroom scene could you keep it down this is a hospital room and I'm pregnant I'm sorry ma'am I didn't realize that you were pregnant so anyway Harlan Williams off camera it's like a shot of the Native American women that start chanting it makes no sense but the ADR is literally just Harlan Williams same like wig wig wag wag WOM it's just like nonsense works look it's in the movie and it's like they just do that to see if he could get it in the movie and if anyone would notice but that whole scene that that's probably the best scene in the movie the vert the birth scene just because it's so like it's not just oh this wacky scene he's delivering the baby there's no reason this pregnant woman would be in this room with Harlan Williams character who just has like a broken leg and then across from where these two overweight Native American women that just start chanting for no reason that's a case of like can I put this in a movie I guess I can I think just the amount of violence the amount of violence and swearing the other there's like this weird aggressive tone to the whole movie [Music] the title of the movie Freddy got fingered is an allusion to child molestation that say let's see what I can get away with leans somehow nobody noticed and he released this movie nationwide where the title the movies about fingering a little boy I guess the joke in the movie it's not very successful it's weird I think a lot of stuff might have been cut with this subplot because the whole idea is there like a group therapy session and he accuses his dad of molesting his little brother so they they they take Freddy away from the family and they put him in this lake they call it like the Institute for molested children or some I wrote it down oh you rubbed down good [Music] and there's very little that it almost feels like they treat it like Freddie's a grown adult but they treat him like he's a little kid yeah but it's so it almost feels like they like cut out anything cuz there's like if you watch the behind the scenes stuff there was more there okay but there's a bizarre moment that I think might be commenting on something traditional family structure or something I don't even know but they're at the sexually molested children Institute and all these little children that I guess were sexually molested or watching the Texas Chainsaw Massacre and then it hard cuts from that to gourd watching like like my three sons or Leave It to Beaver yes I believe it to be like it's a hard cut and like there's like some sort of weird juxtaposition whereas like I think he might be trying to say something here but I don't know if it works I don't know what he's trying to say yeah but it's clearly an intentional cut from one to the other all these damaged children watching this horribly violent film and the squeaky clean sitcom yeah yeah yeah I don't know quite what he's going for there but it's something there are people that that will genuinely defend this movie is like a like a work of surrealist art it's like I don't know if I can go it's definitely a deconstruction of mainstream comedy yeah I'm not gonna go so far as to say it's like a surreal masterpiece the the famous Roger Ebert review of this movie that came out at the time which I've always loved it might be one of my favorite reviews he's ever written but he says something along the lines of like there may come a day where this movie is seen as some sort of surrealist statement but the day will never come when it's seen as funny but then later like a year later Tom Green was in this completely forgotten movie called stealing Harvard with Jason Lee and that's like Generic studio comedy and I remember his rebirth review of that where he's like hey this movie's generic it's forgettable sucks as hard as I was on Freddy got fingered like I remember it like I still remember it a year later yeah yeah and that's that's that's what's interesting about it is he says it's not funny I disagree yeah I laughs I think sterically yeah it's sleeves in this yeah you have to view it almost like outside of the movie like it is sort of like you're laughing at the fact that this stuff is in a movie more so than any like constructed joke it's like that dinner scene where Tom Green takes betty out to dinner oh yeah and he's supposed to be at his new job but but Rip Torn is there with his mom and then it's a very sitcom dad I know this is a little Timmy a little too mean he's an employee he works at the company he gets us food and stuff right Timmy what the [ __ ] is going on guard what what's he doing there and then you know one just goes crazy well what happened they start arguing and the waiter comes over and he's like stop it this is a fancy restaurant but I think it's even called fancy right yes so it's like it's like it's aware of what kind of scene it is yeah and it's just blowing it apart it's just like it's like he throws a grenade into the scene yeah I know what this scene is I know how it's supposed to go but I'm going to exponentially multiply now the dumbness of that scene and almost to the point of where it then becomes something new yeah it becomes like you said outside of the movie itself I know at one point a few years ago Tom Green was talking about wanting to do a director's cut which I don't know what would be in there I want to see more but I think I don't think this movie is achieved the kind of like cult status that would probably warrants the company putting the money into doing something like that yeah so I don't know but yeah there's not even like a regular blu-ray release of us just DVD I don't think I don't think that it has enough of a following or that that is possible but I guess we're kind of recommending it you have to watch it with very specific set of eyes yes yes so go out and buy Freddy got fingered everybody and so you can get it from 99 cents on Amazon get that going because we wonder what the blu-ray of it let's see I forget the the release the Schneider cut nonsense justice league release the green cut really he's the green cut of Freddy got fingered hashtag released the green cut yeah let's do it [Music]

Channel: undefined

Views: 1,956,197

Rating: 4.9036312 out of 5

Keywords: redlettermedia, red letter media, red, letter, media, plinkett, half in the bag, mike stoklasa, jay bauman, rich evans, freddy got fingered, tom green, rip torn, tom green show

Id: gEn3wcpNsg8

Length: 37min 22sec (2242 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 24 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

As a young adult and student FGF was my go to movie. I honestly used to think it was a thing of beauty, some of the funniest shit I'd ever seen. Then life moved on, I passed through my 20s, got married, had kids, bought a house, started working for myself. One day, on break, this baby pops up in my YouTube notifications. I think I have now seen the Re:view more than the film itself.

[u/CaptainMatticus]

Their review of Starship Troopers is up there, too. I'd say that they share the #1 spot.

[u/Ned_Shimmelfinney]

Mike and Jim talking about Star Trek: The Motion Picture is up there for me.

[u/GenericBiddleMusic]

The "backwards man" scene still pops in my head every once in a while. And this is nearly 19 years since watching it fully.

[u/[deleted]]

I feel like their best reviews are ones of obscure or "why are they reviewing this" movies where you think you know what you're getting into but there's some greater point or story to it. The recent Freaked review, this, and Starship Troopers are ones that come to mind.

[u/MaximusMansteel]

I'm going to have to give that award to Nothing But Trouble, just because Nothing For Trouble needs to win something ever (not including Razzies).

[u/meMongo69]

I really like their Re:View of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me

[u/Grievous_1982]

The Thing & Exorcist III episodes stick out for me personally.

[u/Mrbluepumpkin]

My parents forced me to watch this movie with them. It was an experience like no other