Bottom Feeders Gets Fingered

Comedy is a tricky thing.  It’s a lot harder to judge than drama because it’s so subjective.  Everyone thinks a child dying is sad, but only a few people think it’s funny and the rest of you are wrong.  Comedy’s subjectivity is the very thing that stops pure comedies from ever winning an Oscar for best picture, because comedy can be hilarious to a few or just funny to a few more, but it can never be hilarious to everyone.

So when it comes to a movie like Freddy Got Fingered, the question cannot be “Is this a funny movie.”  It has to be “Is this a funny movie to me.” and here’s why: a lot of comedians talk about a time where they told a joke they thought was absolutely hilarious and it died while another joke they thought was mediocre just killed.  It turned out the joke they thought was awesome was just too personal to them, and the mediocre joke was something everyone has been through.

Tom Green will never have that second kind of joke.  Everything he does is hilarious to him.  A lot of it is hilarious to him only.  If you happen to feel exactly like Tom Green you’ll probably find it funny too, but he won’t pander to you because he doesn’t know how.  So watching Freddy Got Fingered is like reading someone’s diary.  Not their normal diary, the one they write in assuming someone will break in and read some day, so it’s full of quotable bullshit and fake angst – their other diary.  The one they hide under a loose floorboard and protect with their life, because if anyone ever saw it, they’d know every shitty detail about them.

Here’s another way of putting it.  I’m sure if you read a hip website like yourpopfilter.com you watch hip TV shows like Community.  You’ll then recall the community episode where Abed makes this video:

Freddy got fingered is that for 89 minutes.  Am I saying Tom Green has Asperger’s?  No.  I’m saying he probably doesn’t not have it, for legal reasons.  So what’s watching an hour and a half of someone trying desperately to communicate with the outside world like?  It’s painful.  It’s exhausting.  It fucks with your head.  And the scary part is, a lot of it totally is relatable.  It’s a movie that says “Hey, look how fucked up I am.” and dares you not to think “Holy shit, I’m like that.”  For instance, watch this scene.  If you’ve ever worked in the service industry – or just had to take shit from someone while doing something pointless – you can’t tell me you haven’t thought the whole world is just a shitty cheese sandwich some asshole wants more cheese on and you don’t give a shit about.  But you have to put more cheese on it, so you can keep your shitty job and go back to your shitty apartment.

So here’s the deal.  All I’ve ever heard about Freddy Got Fingered is that it’s the worst movie ever or a masterpiece.  But here at Yourpopfilter.com we try and have our own take and I’m going to encourage you to do the same right now.  I can tell you the shape that Freddy Got Fingered takes.  I can tell you it’s insanely weird, disturbingly dark and that Tom Green jerks off both a horse and an elephant in it.  But you have to fill that shape in yourself.  You’ll see something in it you relate to or you won’t.  Just know that either way, Tom Green doesn’t care.  He accepted all the Razzies for this movie in person.

Yes, other people have done that.  But they’re almost always going right next to their shiny Oscar on the mantlepiece.  Tom Green isn’t putting this next to an Oscar.  I don’t want to know what he’s putting it next to, but it’s almost certainly some combination of dead animals and human feces.  Those razzies are his Oscars.  Why else would he have an executive in his movie tell him “It’s fucking stupid.  What you need here is elevation.  There actually has to be something that happens that’s actually funny.  What the fuck is happening here?” or have someone holding a sign that says “When the fuck is this movie going to end?”

Tom Green knew people would hate this movie.  He still got to make it, probably because when someone asks why the hell they should greenlight your disgusting/weird movie, telling them “Because I had ball cancer” will almost always make them see it your way.  And I’m glad it did, because I honestly enjoyed the shit out of it in a refreshing, un-ironic way.  I think it’s awesome.  You almost definitely won’t.  That doesn’t make you wrong.  It just means that your type of fucked up is different from mine, and you’ll relate to something else that I’ll think is completely retarded.  It will almost definitely be The Science of Sleep.

 

Am I right or am I right?  Email all opinions, in the form of a yes or no answer, to [email protected] and explain yourself before you cause pain to yourself.  Or, follow me on Twitter @Dan_Tompkins.  You can shout at me there and as a bonus, I will amuse you.