FREDDY GOT FINGERED

Unlike some recent salaciously titled flicks that make no explicit reference to their double entendre (Blow and Snatch), Tom Green’s directorial debut revels in the vulgar connotation of its namesake. Green, who co-wrote the screenplay, plays Gord Brody, a 28-year-old slacker who treks to Hollywood to slap salami around a cheese factory while pursuing a cartooning career. When Gord tracks down an animation-industry bigwig (Anthony Michael Hall) and the exec spurns Gord’s doodlings, he returns to Oregon to sulk in his parents’ basement. Ashamed of his “stupid loser” son, Gord’s curmudgeonly father (Rip Torn) declares war on his freakish spawn. Bones get broken. Animals get hand jobs. Sausage gets hung. And a finger gets Gord’s younger brother Freddy (Eddie Kaye Thomas of American Pie).

Never mind that Green fellating a cow udder on MTV was mere foreplay to Freddy’s forays into bestiality — the plot here is a flimsy function of its gross gags. Among the joke-shop props are crippled legs, gnawed umbilical cords, Rip Torn’s bare ass, and a bodily-fluid taste test. Whereas the appeal (if you found one) of The Tom Green Show was Green’s devotion to heckling social mores, interrupting routine, and making staid people squirm, Freddy Got Fingered’s major success is making its paying customers squirm.

— Camille Dodero