Oh, My.
No way. He actually does these things?
I’d heard the movie was bad, but I didn’t know any specifics. Jeebus.
You are truly a rock, Crunchy. Wow.
Snicks
I doubt it…I’m almost 30, generally hate slap-stick comedy. Heck, I found There’s Something about Mary to be far more objectionable than Freddy Got Fingered. In TSAM, they tried too hard to be funny. In FGF, there’s no pretense. Tom Green is trying to be as stupid, as infantile, as low-brow, as dumb as possible. And, judging by everyone’s reaction, he has succeeded with flying colors. It takes talent to make a movie so monumentally “bad.” It’s not accidental bad like Gigli. It purposeful, calculated, in-your-face bad. A movie like this doesn’t happen by accident.
So help me, I laughed there (in the review, not the movie).
tosses some money into the psych. bucket
Thanks for taking that bullet and turning it into a fun to read review.
Crunchy, not only did you take a bullet, you took the whole dadblamed ammo dump.
Wow…just wow.
I read an interview with Tom Green once in which he says that he considers irritating people as positive a reaction as making them laugh. So I avoid his work like the plague. In this case, the only way to win is not to play.
More blurbs for the DVD box. 
Crunchy Frog, how did thes movie stand up to Spice World?
Oh man. I should have been at work 20 minutes ago, but I had to finish reading this thread.
Save me Jeebus…
Ok, a couple of quick questions then:
Why is this admirable?
It doesn’t take talent to make a bad movie. It takes poor taste, a lack of wit, and the money to make a bad movie. And how do you know this was not an accident? Do you know Tom Green personally and he told you while making the film that he wanted to make an in-your-face bad movie? Are you just a Tom Green fan who’s defending this mess? Or does everyone else just not get it but you and A.O. Scott, whoever that is.
If there’s something on the ground you think is chocolate, but 100 people walk by and tell you it’s shit, do you still think it’s chocolate? The fact that there seems to be only one other person in the world who agrees with you should be Clue #1: This movie is shit, there’s nothing admirable about it. What’s admirable about jacking off a horse, scenes of bloody and screaming children used as a punchline, biting through an umbilical cord with one’s teeth and then swinging the baby around by the umbilical cord, and beating paralized women in the shins with bamboo? Please explain to me why this is something to be admired, cuz apparently I’m not bright enough to see the genius that is Tom Green.
It doesn’t take talent or a genius to be classless, tasteless, and witless. Just look at my Uncle Shane for an example of that.
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No, I don’t know Tom Green personally. The movie just feels purposeful to me, that’s all. I could be wrong, but I doubt it.
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I have never seen anything else about Tom Green, nor did I know who he even was when I first saw the movie. (I was living abroad at the time.)
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Apparently, then, yes, it is only I and A.O Scott (the New York Times critic) who gets it. And Tom Green, I suppose.
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The talent is in the absurd, anarchic nature of the movie. The fact that Tom was able to raise such vitriol from so many movie watchers I think perfectly accomplishes his goal in the movie. I don’t think I could make a movie this gross and pyschotic if I tried. I don’t think many people could. And, dammit, I do think that takes talent. The umbilical cord scene is one of my favorites. It’s so absurd, so unexpected, so disgusting… The movie is a rapid-fire sequence of “I can’t believe they’re doing this” jokes. It’s pure, non-sequitor anarchy – that’s why I love it. The scene where he moves his dad’s house to Afghanistan!!! “Hey dad, welcome to Afghanistan.” Pure gold. How do you think up this stuff?
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I don’t care if you like it or not. I am not saying that you’re smarter or less smart based on your opinions of Tom Green or this movie. Obviously, it seems I’m the idiot for liking this movie.
Anyhow, I just checked Rotten Tomatoes, and it seems FGF actually has a score of 10%. That’s a bit higher than I expected. But I looked up some quotes from the New York Times (since I’m shit at explaining why I like films,) and I find these quotes sum up my feelings pretty well:
There’s plenty more, but I don’t want to violate the SDMB quoting policy. I’m just saying, there’s another way to look at this movie. Just because 100 people say it’s shit, doesn’t mean it is.
Yet the one likeminded critic doesn’t mean it’s not shit, either.
For some reason, I had a feeling that this movie would have its defender or two, which is why I stated in the first paragraph, “So, keeping in mind that film is art, and all art is subjective, here’s my review…”
I understand not everyone has the same taste, and I don’t mean to belittle anyone’s opinion. I love Monty Python, but I also know a ton of people who think Python’s humor is just stupid. I guess it’s best to leave this one as it is, since I can’t see any middle ground here. I didn’t see any redeeming qualities in this movie, whereas you saw something more than the sum of its parts. You saw some sort of statement on society or something I guess in his anarchistic behavior; I saw a moron running around with no reason for anything other than to see how much yelling and tasteless gags could be squeezed into 90 minutes.
I guess we file this one under the catagory of “To Each His Own” since obviously we aren’t going to agree.
I never said it did. I just thought your chocolate/shit analogy proved nothing.
No, no statement on society. I saw exactly what you saw: “a moron running around with no reason for anything other than to see how much yelling and tasteless gags could be squeezed into 90 minutes.” That’s exactly what was so brilliant about it.
But, you are right. I expect nobody to agree with me. I do like your review, though, and the venom the movie inspires it yet another reason I like this move (and think it is effective. I honestly think Tom Green wanted everyone to hate this movie. I mean, it’s SUCH a soft target for critics that I’m surprised people put this much effort in ridiculing it.)
The Roger Ebert Review which contains one of my favorite quotes about movies:
I sadly, saw a few minutes of the movie… it really is that bad, if not worse.
Is there a scene in this movie where Dad drags the skateboard ramp into the street and runs over it? Because if so, this horror was actually on TV the other night. (They must have severely edited it.)
I saw just enough of it to recognize Tom Green and couldn’t hit the buttons on the remote fast enough.
I also found the movie unfunny and tedious, but (independently of Scott) I came to many of the same conclusions about the movie’s intent in my review.
O.K.,
This cheesy flick is not “grand cinema” or anything but it left me and my buddies howling with disgust and laughter (it might have helped that we were drinking). That said I never even considered watching it until I found the DVD for WAYYYY cheap at Wally World.
An example of cinematic excellence, not even!
A sophmoric, gross- fest made by an idiot, O.K.
Unclviny
DAMN that’s long for a movie review, but I must say, that’s the most intelligent analysis of FGF I’ve seen.
Kudos.
The SDMB becoming the place to go for intelligent arguments of alternative viewpoints. There was a discussion not too long ago about why “Showgirls” is actually a great film, and serious arguing on the merits of “Starship Troopers.” Now this.
Pretty cool.
And pulykamell, thanks for hanging around and sharing your opinions. Cervaise’s review made sense to me in giving some justification for “Freddy.” Reading it reminded me of the “Mr. Creosote” sketch in “Monty Python’s Meaning of Life.” I found that disgusting sequence (for those who haven’t seen the movie, it’s about an enormously, enormously fat diner – Terry Jones in the world’s largest fat suit – ordering and consuming an enormous meal, throwing up throughout. At the end, John Cleese, playing the French waiter, induces him to eat “one thing wafer” mint, which causes Mr. Creostoe to explode, spewing vomit all over the other diners.
This had me on the floor, but I doubt “Freddy” would induce the same reaction (well, except for the vomiting). So why could I accept that, but not this? What’s the diff?
My guess is when Python goes all-out with the gross out gags, they go way over the top to the point of it being like a live-action cartoon. The effects of the man blowing up are gross, but not realistic. In shot after the explosion, Mr. Creosote is very much still alive and loking around looking somewhat put-out and maybe a little confused; he shows no pain at all.
Had Tom Green tackled that bit, the man would have been writhing in pain, yelling and screaming in pain, while the effects would look every bit as realistic as a battle scene from Saving Private Ryan.
This difference boils down to cartoonish vs. realistic. Cartoon violence which is over the top and the victims feel no pain is just usually funnier than realistic violence that looks like it could really happen and the characters are screaming as if they’re being slowly tortured.
It really says something about this movie that I can’t tell if that’s a typo or not.