Rob Walker: Let's not kid ourselves, the cancer joke isn't even the most lowbrow scene in the movie. Think about that.
Tom Green's film Freddy Got Fingered doesn't so much cross the line twice as it crosses the line so many times it's virtually impossible to keep track. Opinions on the film lie somewhere between "a fit of twisted genius" and "why the hell did I watch this?" Beware, some of the film's more outrageous moments listed below are definitely NSFW. You have been warned:
- About six minutes into the film, Gord leaps out of his car, runs over to a horse and masturbates its penis for no reason while saying "Look, Daddy, I'm a farmer!"
- Darren rips his knee open while skateboarding and Gord licks the open wound.
- Later, Gord visits Darren in hospital and a pregnant woman in the bed next to his friend goes into labor because he's being so annoying. Gord rips the baby out, cuts its umbilical cord with his teeth, and then "wakes it up" by swinging it around his head like a lasso by said umbilical cord.
- He falsely accuses his father of sexually molesting his teenage brother, Freddy, all while causing a ruckus during a therapy session. This completely random scene is the whole reason for the film's title.
- He falsely accuses his brother of being a teenager. Events in the film make it clear the brother is an adult and just happens to look about 13. He does work in a bank at the kind of job where you need to wear a suit, after all.
- Gord skinning forest animals so that he can wear their still bloody skins and prance around the wood.
- Gord's father exposing his butt to Green and yelling "Fuck me".
- Gord having a kinky sado-masochist relationship with a paraplegic woman.
- To some the most disturbing, a neighbor kid that gets hurt progressively worse throughout the film; the disturbing part is camera sadistically lingering on the wounded kid crying. Culminating in the most infamous scene in the film: a little boy getting chopped up by airplane propeller blades in a horrific accident? Not funny. A little boy getting chopped up by airplane propeller blades and inexplicably being able to shout "I'm okay, Daddy!" AFTERWARDS, a line that was very clearly ADR'ed in afterwards? Okay, now that's kinda funny. What makes it even worse (or better, depending on your perspective?) is that the movie got nearly slapped with an NC-17 ratingnote by the studio for that scene alone. Tom Green responded by changing nothing in the scene except for the addition of the dubbed-in line, and the studio accepted it.
- Perhaps Roger Ebert's infamous review puts it best:This movie doesn't scrape the bottom of the barrel. 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 day may come when Freddy Got Fingered is seen as a milestone of neo-surrealism. The day may never come when it is seen as funny.
- Or, as Kyle Kallgren so succinctly put it:It's too normal to be dada! It's too shit to be anything else!
