Freddy Got Fingered Reviews

Unlike SNATCH, whose vulgar title didn't really mean what you thought, this putative comedy's title does. Ugh. How you respond to this film by MTV irritant/auteur Tom Green is, to put it politely, a matter of taste. This assumes, of course, that the word "taste" can be used accurately to describe anything connected with Green. In any event, a pre-release screening seemed to be populated by two demographics: People who laughed uproariously every time Green fondled the penis of a large animal, and people who headed for the theater doors with a speed usually associated with pursuit by the Hounds of Hell. On another level, though, the film is positively inspirational. If you've ever wondered whether you could write and direct a big-budget feature film that could be deemed worthy of release by a major studio, one viewing of this exercise in willful stupidity will be a world-class confidence builder. Amazingly enough, there is a plot; it involves an aspiring cartoonist named Gord Brody (Green) laboring mightily to convince his blustering father (Rip Torn) that he's not the slacker moron everyone — including the audience — quite correctly assumes him to be. The obligatory subplots include one involving Gord's handicapped girlfriend, Betty (Marisa Coughlan), a rocket scientist (really!) obsessed with fellating her unrealistically unwilling swain, and another that revolves around Gord's younger brother, the titular Freddy (AMERICAN PIE's Eddie Kaye Thomas) and false charges of sexual abuse (this is where the fingering part comes in). Really now, could anything be more hilarious? To be fair, this is hardly the worst gross-out comedy ever made; it's nowhere as misogynistic as, say, TOMCATS, and in the end, it probably won't leave you in a state of utter nihilistic despair. But it's hard to ignore the strain of gratuitous cruelty that runs through it (a running gag features a little kid getting the crap whacked out of him) and Green deserves demerits for restaging the classic Buster Keaton falling house gag without its visual punchline (you don't see Green standing, unhurt, amidst the rubble). Hey — maybe he isn't just pretending to be dumb.