- When I finished watching Freddy Got Fingered, I felt I had a greater understanding of who I was.
A brave review.
You know, I fucking hate this attitude in reviews.
- The shock provided in this movie is an intrinsically valuable service. “Freddy Got Fingered“ helps remind us that some things make us uncomfortable. Some things are just taboo.
Bitch, I didn't pay $9 to be reminded that some things are taboo. I paid $9 to be entertained.
It's like that Norm McDonald roast where any sensible observer would say "Norm McDonald sucks" but every fucking critic on the planet is all "no, you're a pleb, Norm McDonald doesn't suck, he's just doing comedy on a level beyond what you can comprehend, mortal, here, squint your eyes like this and you might one day ascend to comedy Valhalla with the rest of us."
No, fuck that. Performing "suck" is still sucking. You're an entertainer. Your job is to entertain. Amy Schumer pushes boundaries while also entertaining, and that's why she's making money. There's this assumption that somehow, humanity won't "get" big ideas unless some self-satisfied, smug performer rubs their noses in it in a way that makes them hate the performance and it's abject bullshit. It takes no skill whatsoever to make people uncomfortable while masturbating a horse, particularly if they weren't expecting horse masturbation. It takes skill to make people recognize that there are things they shouldn't be uncomfortable with and then have them thank you for it.
Attitudes like this are why the majority of audiences have no trust or love for critics. "No, it was good, you just aren't sophisticated enough to get it." Bitch, the audience for a Tom Green movie is not the audience for a fuckin' Lars von Trier movie and you know it. Also:
- Nobody would speak well of this movie. OK, one guy I knew liked it, but he was the kind of guy who liked The Cell, and therefore not a reliable source.
The Cell was the best rip-off of Dreamscape starring Jennifer Lopez ever made until Inception. Eat a dick.
- It's like that Norm McDonald roast where any sensible observer would say "Norm McDonald sucks" but every fucking critic on the planet is all "no, you're a pleb, Norm McDonald doesn't suck, he's just doing comedy on a level beyond what you can comprehend, mortal, here, squint your eyes like this and you might one day ascend to comedy Valhalla with the rest of us."
The jokes were deliberately bad, but his delivery makes it incredibly funny, at least to me. I've watched that clip numerous times, and I've laughed until I cried on several of those occasions.
I certainly am not pretending to find it funny to appear edgy, and it's kind of ridiculous to suggest that everyone who enjoys that clip is.
I agree it was a terrible movie. It was sloppy and lazy. At the same time, I can understand (just a bit) where Kelley is coming from. FGF did break some ground in an artistic sense, when you consider the venue and distribution, but Tom Green did a terrible job framing it, and as a result, it was ineffective and uninteresting. I can see where Kelley feels the need to point out an artistic effort, but Green failed in the presentation. Because it was so uneven, FGF can be written off as a bad movie, and deserves that fate.
On some level, for art to succeed in spite of taste, it must be compelling. However, once that ground has been broken, everything in the same vain is usually uninteresting, the novelty is gone, and novelty was so much of what the piece had going for it.
There are eight urinals in the world that are called Fountain, approved by Duchamp, and there are numerous replicas. If you pull it off just right, you can get people to covet garbage for the artistic ground that you broke. But when the message is the medium, then you need to make the message clear. FGF could have been a compelling movie, but it is only uncomfortable.
Personally, I think the outtakes at the end of the movie sabotage any artistic goal FGF arguably had.
I get where you're coming from, and I don't disagree - but the argument here is not FGF in the context of something larger, it's
- Imagine my shock to discover that the movie was sort of ... excellent. Not full-on excellent, mind you, but kind of excellent, partially excellent. Excellent in a negative way.
It's
- Freddy Got Fingered failed in the mainstream because it set out to push past that invisible boundary. This isn’t a light, lazy movie, getting by with no more than a “wangs are funny” attitude. It isn’t mere grossness and sophomoric comedy for the sake of a cheap laugh. The movie fails as a comedy, but succeeds as an exercise in discomfort.
But most importantly, it's
- The shock provided in this movie is an intrinsically valuable service. “Freddy Got Fingered“ helps remind us that some things make us uncomfortable. Some things are just taboo.
What's "intrinsically valuable" about reminding us that "some things make us uncomfortable?" Particularly when you haven't made a contract with the audience whereby they request to be made uncomfortable? Some things are cult classics because they're bad - Troll 2, Plan 9, Rocky Horror Picture Show. All of them provide some level of enjoyment, usually because they're unselfconsciously bad. On the other hand, nobody watches the Star Wars Christmas Special for more than ten minutes. Even the clips you can find of The Day The Clown Cried reveal that it's a film nobody wants to see.
I think that's what pisses me off - Tom Green is capable of being funny. Tommy Wiseau is not. You can watch The Room and appreciate the tragedy in motion that is the outsider art of it all, but when you watch Tom Green deliberately not being funny, you're acquiescing to Tom Green choosing your entertainment, not you. It's like ordering a hot fudge sundae and being given liver and onions because the guy behind the counter decided you needed some iron and fuck that guy.
I'm a fan of Red Dawn. I will never accuse it of being a good movie, and I will never argue that it didn't get its fair shake by the public. I will argue that people with a nostalgia for cold war insanity should take a fresh look at Red Dawn because it's a singular confluence of events and a cultural nadir that I'm still amazed we survived. But that doesn't make it a better movie. That doesn't make it an "underrated gem." And I'm not going to suggest people watch it because they need to learn a thing or two about Hollywood and propaganda any more than I'd shove Birth of a Nation or Triumph of the Will down their necks.
I've never seen FGF. I can safely say I never will. There may be compelling reasons for me to check it out, under certain conditions, but arguing that it's been misjudged by history because people didn't ascribe the right motive to Tom Green is the wrong way to convince me.
I know this is beside the point but, I think Norm MacDonald is hilarious and never thought it was something unusual to think. His old guest appearances on the Dennis Miller show cracked me up back in the day.
That's not the discussion here, though:
- In a brilliant showcase of anti-comedy, Norm MacDonald surprised/trolled everyone at the Bob Saget Roast. By responding to producer’s request to be edgier, McDonald brought out deliberately corny and old-fashioned jokes that, fun fact: were made up by his father. The jokes may have been cheesy, but that was their power. It took a while for the audience to understand what was happening that night and to this day some still didn’t get it. But it’s also what makes the lore of McDonald’s appearance stronger.
This is a man deliberately choosing to be un-funny in order to invert things for a bunch of comics. Which is fine. But it doesn't change the fact that he deliberately chose to do wretchedly bad humor for effect.
I want to agree with you, but Bill Hicks. He was a terrible entertainer. Until he was well known enough that he started getting audiences who wanted to see Bill Hicks instead of audiences who weren't expecting him, he had a career because other comedians liked him, not because his audiences liked him.
I guess I could respond with a "Larry the Cable Guy" bit, then someone else would post Jeff Foxworthy and... I think that's about where this devolution terminates.
Eric Andre is one of my new faves, but I think a lot of people hate absurdist style comedy (edit: the "skits" he does in public can be a bit too much). The stuff Kyle Mooney did before SNL handed him shitty scripts was pretty funny. Here's a sketch centered entirely on a jacket he found at a thrift store. You might identify more with this one though, 'bl00.
Which is never a fair criticism, because even when it's true it's like that story Brian Eno tells about the first Velvet Underground album selling very few copies, but everyone who bought one starting a band. It's a credit to what came first, but not a fault in what came after. But they're right that you can see Bill Hicks in a lot of comedy that came after him, and I think that alone justifies calling him a good comedian despite not being a good entertainer.
Don't make me trot out Yngwie Malmstein again.
If you're a writer, Stranger than Fiction is a masterpiece. If you're just a schlub in the audience, it's that movie that Will Farrell is in and is somehow totally not funny but dating an exceptionally bitchy Maggie Gyllenhaal for some reason. The argument of articles like this is not "some people like Stranger than Fiction, some people don't" it's that "everyone should have the sensibilities of writers so that they appreciate Stranger than Fiction the way I do."
It's still elitism. I'm not a standup comic, never will be, and don't even like to hang out with them. If I, the audience, don't appreciate something, it's not my fault. I'm just passively sitting here like a lump of shit. It's the job of entertainers to entertain.
Maybe the audience is "fellow standup comics." That's fine. You still don't get to lash out at people for not appreciating the dark genius of Tom Green jacking off a horse.
So way back when, I and a bunch of friends heard of a documentary called "The Aristocrats" about a vulgar joke that Comedians would tell each other, to gross each other out, show off their creativity, one up each other, etc. I honestly don't remember it all that well, as it was a bit back, but it was pretty insightful and I was surprised to learn the Bob Saget is actually a dirty fucker and I have no idea how he got two family friendly, top television shows in his career. I enjoyed it. I've never seen Freddy Got Fingered, I haven't even read this review, but judging by the discussion here, I don't think I'd appreciate the film. Maybe instead of blowing a bunch of time and effort creating an avant garde comedy film and try to sell it to guys like me, Tom Green should have just spent his time impressing his peers by coming up with a good version of The Aristocrats to share with his buds.