Freddy Got Fingered (R) No Rating

After Hollywood's television bigwigs chew him up and spit him out, Gord Brady moves back into his parents' basement to focus on his dream of becoming an animator.

Story

MTV's gross-out teen idol Tom Green co-wrote, directed and stars in this comedy about an intellectually stunted 28-year-old man with a wacky sense of humor and visions of becoming an animator and making his father (Rip Torn) proud. Gord Brady (Tom Green) leaves his suburban hometown and heads for Hollywood in a Chrysler his father gave him, taking nothing more than a dream and some drawings. Rejected by Tinseltown, he heads back home to live in the family's basement. He meets and dates Betty (Marisa Coughland), a paraplegic and dilettante rocket scientist, and falsely accuses his father of molesting his 23-year-old brother, Freddy (Eddie Kaye Thomas). Despite his father's insistence that he give up his "doodling," find a real job and move out of the house, Gord revels in moronic pleasures and irritates everyone around him, including the audience. The simple story line, unfortunately, takes too long to get to the fairly simple point.

Acting

While Green could generate laughs with his barnyard pranks in his unscripted, 30-minute TV show, his brand of scatological humor doesn't translate to the big screen. There is nothing believable or comical in his delivery: he just yells, stutters and repeats the same lines over and over. His jokes are so inane it becomes almost embarrassing to watch, and because his character Gord is so badly developed, the audience may wonder whether he is crude or sincerely mentally challenged. Rip Torn plays Gord's father as an almost-convincing redneck, but one has to wonder what he was thinking when he took this part. If there is one notable performance in this film it is Anthony Michael Hall's portrayal of Mr. Davidson, the television tycoon who sends Gord packing. Though he appears in only two scenes, Hall is by far the most convincing and plausible character in the film: he may be ruthless and callous, but at least he's consistent and entertaining.

Direction

What makes Green's brand of vulgar humor entertaining is missing from Freddy Got Fingered-an unaware audience's reaction to his stunts. The look of genuine surprise on people's faces unfortunately can not be written into a feature film, so scenes like Green dancing inside a deer carcass, instead of being shocking, are just plain sad. The only worthy parts of the film are the animated sequences and artwork from director/designer Chris Prynoski of MTV fame (Beavis and Butthead, Daria, MTV Downtown), which are few and far between. With boring jokes of animal fornication and a story line that goes nowhere, Freddy Got Fingered does not deliver anything but doleful and uninteresting drivel.

Bottom line

Spare yourself from this painful and pathetic attempt at comedy.