Tom Green, star of the Tom Green Show on MTV, makes his directorial debut with “Freddy Got Fingered.” First let me just say, ahhhhhhhhh! Sweet Jesus! What kind of sick, twisted individual makes a film like this? This movie features a paraplegic who gets off by having her lifeless legs beaten with a rattan cane and then performing oral sex on her abuser. It has not one but two scenes of the protagonist, or maybe he’s the anti-hero, arousing large mammals and their extra large members. First a horse and then an elephant. The elephant actually finishes, if you know what I’m saying.

The press release describes “Freddy Got Fingered” as a battle of wills between a strict father and his equally stubborn son who refuses to move out of his parents’ basement and get a job. I’m reminded of Francis Ford Coppola’s acceptance of the Grand Prize at Cannes for “Appocalypse Now.” He said, “My movie isn’t about Vietnam, it is Vietnam.” I feel precisely that way about “Freddy Got Fingered.”

This is a film who’s title refers to a particular act of molestation that Gordy, played by Green, accuses his father of performing on his younger brother. A charge that is completely false and ultimately played for laughs. Inappropriate, sure. Immoral, yep. Wrong for so many reasons I cannot begin to even count them. Funny? G-d forgive me, I thought I might have a stroke I was laughing so hard.

It’s true. This is a sick, perverted and deeply disturbed individual who has made one of the sickest and funniest movies I can remember in a long time. “Freddy Got Fingered” is a portrait of a performer with absolutely no boundaries. It was reminiscent of early John Waters films like “Pink Flamingoes.” Compound fractures, the severing of an umbilical cord by teeth and crawling inside a deer carcass are some of the grosser gags featured. Yet it was the pure silly gags, minus the shock, that I found the funniest. I’m Erik Petersen for Movie Magazine.

© 2001 - Erik Petersen - Air Date: 4/25/01