It's a new kind of bad, one never thought possible. Has this film elevated awful to a new art form? What has been unleashed?
Release date: September 4, 2018
Review of: Freddy Got Fingered
We remembered these tropes so you don't have to:
- Artistic License – History: The Critic calls out Gord claiming to aspire to be a good animator like Charles Schultz (of Peanuts fame), pointing out that the latter is a cartoonist.
- Bile Fascination: Invoked when it comes to the part where Freddy is put in the Institute for Sexually Molested Children."I wasn't here for a second, was I? That scene actually took me someplace else — a place not of this realm. It was not a good place; in fact, it was a very, very bad place. One of the worst places I've ever been. But, it was so bad... I almost wanna go back to it. I wanna study it. I want to understand how, on every level of unpleasantness, this scene went above and beyond what I thought possible in a film. [...] I have never witnessed a scene like that in cinema, and only this story and this tone could build up to something so heinous. There is no place you can look, no area you can escape to, nothing else you can think about except every possible ugliness crammed into this one moment."
- Creator Killer: In-Universe, the Critic thinks this movie basically just put a huge hole in the career of Rip Torn and Julie Hagerty, who plays Gord and Freddy's parents Jim and Julie.
- Creepy Monotone: The Critic does this as part of his imitating Anton Chigurh in the opening.
- Crosses the Line Twice: The Critic's In-Universe opinion on some of the humor of the film, especially an infamous scene where Freddy was put into the Institute for Sexually Molested Children and is forced with other children to watch a filming of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974).
- Dope Slap: At the end of the review, Tamara and Malcolm give the Critic one each for "killing" them off.
- Double Standard: Commenting on the Institute for Sexually Molested Children scene, the Critic complains that somehow Tom Green is allowed to get away with questionable directing choices that would put any other director in hot water, noting how James Gunn had been fired two months ago from directing Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (though he was eventually reinstated in March 2019) after some of his offensive tweets in the past have resurfaced, including a reference to the aforementioned scene.
- Finger Gun: The Critic somehow kills Rob with one on his way to the video rental store.
- Malicious Misnaming: The Critic introduces Tom Green (Gordon "Gord" Brody) in the film's opening credits as "Canada's Punishment".
- Not Even Bothering with an Excuse: When the scene where Gord reveals he keeps his umbilical cord taped to himself is shown, the Critic has nothing to say except the following...Critic: I can't think of any possible way to make that funny, so I'm just gonna continue with the story I started before.
- The One Thing I Don't Hate About You: The only character the Critic really liked in the movie is Marisa Coughlan as Betty Menger, a weelchair-bound nurse and Gord's girlfriend.
- Overly Long Gag: The Critic describes the film's unique badness as follows..."A 'so bad, it's bad; and that bad is so bad, it's bad; and that bad is so bad, it's bad; and that bad is so bad, it's good; and that good is so bad, it's bad'."
- Playing Against Type: In-Universe, the Critic felt Harland Williams, who usually plays wiseguy characters, is being forced to play Darren's Straight Man to Gord's Wiseguy.
- Ripped from the Headlines: The Critic thinks the opening scene showing Gord skateboarding reinforces the rumor that his actor Tom Green is actually good at something, which he calls "fake news", a term popularized in the late 2010s.
- Running Gag: Censor Boxes abound in scenes too offensive even for such a show which rarely shies away from offensive content as The Nostalgia Critic.
- Shout-Out:
- The Framing Device of the review is a homage to No Country for Old Men, with the Critic imitating Anton Chigurh.
- Noting on how out-of-element Harland Williams was as Straight Man Darren, the Critic shows clips of his zany performances as a guest (imitating a leprechaun) in Late Night with Conan O'Brien, as a British explorer in NBC's short-lived version of Australian improvised comedy show Thank God You're Here, and as Fred Randall screaming like a little girl in RocketMan (1997).
- Jim's long scream over Gord noisily building his wooden half-pipe late at night has the Critic thinking it is the first lines to the opening song of The Lion King (1994).
- When Gord's father smacks his naked ass, a Censor Box pops up saying, "A Moose Once Bit My Sister" (this follows the prior box admitting ideas on what to write are running thin).
- Skewed Priorities: The Critic claims that he was so dumbfounded at the film's cavalier attitude towards sexual abuse to minors (embodied at the infamous Institute for Sexually Molested Children scene) that he ended up largely overlooking the constant physical harm being dealt to Andy Malloy, a young neighbor of Gord.
- Stylistic Suck: The Critic is frustrated that he can't properly berate the movie as being the worst thing he has ever seen, because that is exactly what the movie was trying to be.
- Take That!:
- Early on when Gord is childishly playing pretend with his drawings, Critic makes a snipe that it's what John Kricfalusi does in his off time.
- Seeing that Gord is applying for Radioactive Animation Studio, the Critic thinks in real life its actual name is Sony Pictures Studios, showing some of its most notorious works such as Surf's Up, The Emoji Movie, Open Season and The Smurfs.
- The Critic lists Tom Green's short-lived marriage to Drew Barrymore (who also plays the receptionist at Radioactive Studios) as among the most shocking things he has done (besides sucking on a cow's tit and dry-humping a dead moose). He also jokes that the childish manner with which the receptionist rebuffed Gord's advances is also similar to how Barrymore and Green divorced.
- Seeing that Julie's new boyfriend (after divorcing Jim) is Shaquille O'Neal, the Critic snarks that the latter somehow found a worse film to star in than Kazaam.
- Wall of Text: The last Censor Box in the film, covering Gord forcing an elephant to ejaculate all over Jim, contains an excerpt from Hamlet, because the Critic admits he's running out of ideas as to what to put in the box:"How all occasions do inform against me. And spur my dull revenge! What is a man, if his chief good and market of his time be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more. Sure, he that made us with such large discourse, looking before and after, gave us not that capability and godlike reason to fust in us unused. Now, whether it be bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple of thinking too precisely on the event, a thought which, quarter'd, hath but one part wisdom and ever three parts coward, I do not know why yet I live to say 'This ting's to do;' Sith I have cause and will and strength and means to do't. Examples gross as earth exhort me; witness this army of such mass and charge led by a delicate and tender prince, whose spirit with divine ambition puff'd makes mouths at the invisible event, exposing what is mortal and unsure to all that fortune, death and danger dare, even for an eggshell. Rightly to be great is now to stir without great argument, but greatly to find quarrel in a straw when honour's at the stake. How stand I then, that have a father kill'd, a mother stain'd, excitements of my reason and my blood, and let all sleep? While, to my shame, I see the imminent death of twenty thousand men, that, for a fantasy and trick of fame, go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot whereon the numbers cannot try the cause, which is not tomb enough and continent to hide the slain? O, from this time forth, my thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!
Yeah, that's right, I got so tired of using these black squares to block out stupid shit that I decided to use one of them to give you some Shakespeare. I covered a giant animal schlong with Shakespeare! What the hell is my life!?! What the HELL is my life!?!?!?"
"Listen to my hooves! Nyeh-ya! Listen to my hooves! (laughs)"
