The disgusting movie Roger Ebert called “below the bottom of the barrel”
For film critics in the Western world, there’s one central name that’s persistently looked up to as a champion of critical letters: the inimitable Roger Ebert. The writer possessed an unrivalled understanding of the history and intricacies of the cinematic medium, and his work elevated him alongside some of the film industry’s biggest names.
Not only was Ebert able to dissect and analyse all facets of a film, from its narrative to its production values, but he was also capable of imbuing within his words an emotional sense of humanism that championed the realm of film as a part of the human experience through which audiences could be brought closer together in understanding.
Naturally, though, there were several films that the acclaimed writer witnessed throughout his life that he was not a great admirer of; such is the job of those in the profession. Ebert wrote countless scathing attacks on films that did not match up to his aesthetic or thematic standard, and some features were worse than others. However, few, it seemed, were worse in Ebert’s eyes than Tom Green’s Freddie Got Fingered.
“This movie doesn’t scrape the bottom of the barrel,” Ebert wrote in his damning condemnation of the highly provocative surrealist black comedy, marking Tom Green’s feature-length directorial debut. “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 2001 film saw Green play an immature slacker cartoonist, Gordon Brody, who seeks out a career as an animator while dealing with the abusive behaviour of his father. In some ways, there’s a parallel that runs between Gordon and Green’s lives in how Green had desperately tried to get his TV show picked up, which MTV eventually would in the form of The Tom Green Show.
“The film is a vomitorium consisting of 93 minutes of Tom Green doing things that a geek in a carnival sideshow would turn down,” Ebert continued. “Six minutes into the film, his character leaps from his car to wag a horse penis. This is, we discover, a framing device – to be matched by a scene late in the film where he sprays his father with elephant semen, straight from the source.”
The legendary film critic signed off his review of the film: “Green’s sense of humor may not resemble yours. Consider a scene where Gord’s best friend busts his knee open while skateboarding. Gord licks the open wound. Then he visits his friend in the hospital. A woman in the next bed goes into labor. Gord rips the baby from her womb and, when it appears to be dead, brings it to life by swinging it around his head by its umbilical cord, spraying the walls with blood. If you wanted that to be a surprise, then I’m sorry I spoiled it for you.”
…But is Freddie Got Fingered now a cult movie?
Well, let’s not get carried away. There’s no doubt that many people would consider this outright barmy film as something of a cult favourite, but it is certainly of its time. Tom Green would likely consider his bold decisions and bizarre humour as something to stand by, and his dedication to the chaotic tone can be praised on some level. While the movie has rightly been lambasted by many, it wouldn’t be a total stretch to suggest this was something of a forerunner for contemporary absurdist comedies like those from Adult Swim because of its rejection of conventional storytelling and comedic conventions.
One of its distinguishing features, though, is still its divisiveness. Some people find it to be an unwatchable catastrophe, while others see it as a daring, misinterpreted masterpiece that defies accepted filmmaking norms.
And yet, buried beneath the juvenile chaos and head-spinning irreverence, there is a strange kind of artistic commitment that makes Freddie Got Fingered hard to dismiss outright. It’s not just shock for the sake of it, though there’s plenty of that. If you wanted to push the envelope, you could maybe out-argue your mate down the pub that this is actually performance art dressed up as gross-out comedy, the cinematic version of someone pushing that big red button just to see what happens. Whether it’s the fractured editing, the willfully awkward dialogue, or Green’s relentless self-parody, every choice feels designed to irritate and provoke in some capacity.
I mean, there’s a reason the film refuses to disappear completely, isn’t there? Even if most people still cringe at the mention of its name, Freddie Got Fingered lingers in pop culture like a bad idea that somehow made it out the door. Green stuck to his vision with a kind of reckless purity. You could argue this film carved out a strange little corner for the weird, the broken, and the deliberately alienating. Maybe that’s not quite redemption, but it is a legacy of its own…in some way, at least.
That’s precisely why Freddie Got Fingered isn’t for everyone. Green’s highly unorthodox effort revels in its own ridiculousness. Although it was criticised when it was first released, it found a place somewhere close to avant-garde comedy. Freddie Got Fingered has a legacy of some form, regardless of whether you consider it a misinterpreted masterpiece or an act of cinematic sabotage.
