Box office

On a budget of $14 million, Freddy Got Fingered grossed $14,254,993 domestically and $78,259 overseas for a worldwide total of $14,333,252, making it initially a commercial failure^[2] though it did eventually turn a profit from DVD sales. The film earned $24,300,000 from DVD sales, and was among the top 50 weekly DVD rentals chart.^[9] Green has stated in a few interviews in 2010 that DVD sales have been growing many years later and that there was a cult following.^[10] In a 2017 interview, Green stated that the box office receipts for the film did not reflect the actual attendance, as he thinks that moviegoers under the age of 17 bought tickets to Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles and then snuck into the theater showing his film.^[11]

Critical response

In this infamous scene, Gord Brody ties sausages hanging from the ceiling to his fingers, plays the piano badly, and sings "Daddy, would you like some sausage?"

Freddy Got Fingered was panned upon release, with many critics considering it to be one of the worst films of all time. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 10% based on reviews from 95 critics, with an average rating of 3.20/10. The site's consensus reads "Unfavorably comparing it with such infamously bad titles as Battlefield Earth, a significant number of critics are calling Tom Green's extreme gross-out comedy the worst movie they have ever seen."^[12] On Metacritic, which assigns a weighted mean rating out of 100 to reviews from film critics, the film has an "Overwhelming dislike" rating score of 13 out of 100 based on 25 reviews.^[13] Audiences polled by CinemaScore filmgoers gave Freddy Got Fingered and average grade of C−, on an A+ to F scale.^[14]

The Toronto Star created a one-time new rating for Freddy Got Fingered, giving it "negative one star out of five stars." CNN's Paul Clinton called it "quite simply the worst movie ever released by a major studio in Hollywood history" and listed the running time as "87 awful minutes."^[15]

Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert gave the film a rare zero-star rating and listed it as one of his most hated films of all time,^[16] and described the film thus: "This movie doesn't scrape the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn't the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn't below the bottom of the barrel. This movie doesn't deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence with barrels [...]. The day may come when Freddy Got Fingered is seen as a milestone of neo-surrealism. The day may never come when it is seen as funny."^[17]

Richard Roeper, on the TV show At the Movies, hosted by Roeper and Ebert, called it "horrible" and expressed the view that Green was a poor comedian, going so far as to say that he "should be flipping burgers somewhere". Along with Ebert, he was offended by the numerous "gross-out" gags. Film critic Leonard Maltin shared Ebert and Roeper's views of the film: "Instantly notorious word-of-mouth debacle became the poster child for all that's wrong with movie comedy. Gags include the maiming of an innocent child and a newborn spun around in the air by its umbilical cord—compounded by the almost unimaginable ineptitude with which they're executed."^[18] In 2017, the film critic of The Guardian, Peter Bradshaw, cited it as the worst film he had ever seen,^[19] and James Berardinelli says that it is his least-favourite film of all time.^[20] David Stratton and Margaret Pomeranz of SBS' The Movie Show were not impressed by the film's content and tone. Stratton gave the film zero stars while Pomeranz gave it one star.^[21] The magazine Complex included the film in its listicle, "25 Movies That Killed Careers".^[22]

A. O. Scott of The New York Times, compared the film to conceptual performance art and praised it "guardedly and with a slightly guilty conscience".^[23]

Accolades

The film received eight Golden Raspberry Award nominations in 2002, winning five. In acknowledgment of the critical consensus regarding the film's merits, Green personally appeared at the ceremony to accept his awards, bringing his own red carpet and saying: "I'd just like to say to all the other nominees in the audience: I don't think that I deserve it any more than the rest of you. I'd like to say that; I don't think that it would be true, though."^[24] Green would go on to play the harmonica badly for so long that he was dragged off the stage.^[24] In February 2010, it was announced that Freddy Got Fingered was nominated for "Worst Picture of the Decade" for the 30th Golden Raspberry Awards but "lost" to Battlefield Earth.^[25] Freddy Got Fingered also garnered seven nominations at the 2001 Stinkers Bad Movie Awards, five of which were wins.^[26] Following his wins, The Stinkers went ahead and designed their very own trophy for him to collect.^[27]

Later reviews

Freddy Got Fingered began to see more positive praise over time, becoming a cult classic. Critic Nathan Rabin of The A.V. Club gave the film a rave review in his "My Year of Flops" column, comparing it to the work of Jean-Luc Godard and calling the film "less as a conventional comedy than as a borderline Dadaist provocation, a $15 million prank at the studio's expense" adding "it's utterly rare and wondrous to witness the emergence of a dazzlingly original comic voice. I experienced that glorious sensation watching Fingered...I can honestly say that I've never seen anything remotely like it" and rated it a "Secret Success."^[28] In a later column, Rabin stated "I was a little worried that I'd catch flak for giving mad props to a film as divisive and widely reviled as Freddy Got Fingered. So I was relieved to discover that every single comment agreed with my assessment of it... It also didn't escape my attention that my Freddy post was the most commented-upon post in the history of My Year of Flops by a huge margin."^[29] Comedian Chris Rock listed Freddy Got Fingered as one of his favorite movies on his website.^[30]

Later, in his review of the film Stealing Harvard, a film co-starring Green, Ebert wrote: "Seeing Tom Green reminded me, as how could it not, of his movie Freddy Got Fingered, which was so poorly received by the film critics that it received only one lonely, apologetic positive review on the Tomatometer. I gave it—let's see—zero stars. Bad movie, especially the scene where Green was whirling the newborn infant around his head by its umbilical cord. But the thing is, I remember Freddy Got Fingered more than a year later. I refer to it sometimes. It is a milestone. And for all its sins, it was at least an ambitious movie, a go-for-broke attempt to accomplish something. It failed, but it has not left me convinced that Tom Green doesn't have good work in him. Anyone with his nerve and total lack of taste is sooner or later going to make a movie worth seeing."^[31]

In Green's interview on The Opie and Anthony Show, host Gregg "Opie" Hughes said the film had begun to be regarded as "one of the funniest movies ever made".^[32] Green said the film had sold a million copies,^[32] and that he wished to make a director's cut due to a lot of footage not making the final cut.^[32] Green said that he was not trying to make The Jazz Singer and that many fans of the movie shout out scenes from the film regularly at his stand-up performance.^[32]

Unreality Magazine featured the film in its list of "10 Hilarious Movies That Received Terrible Reviews", noting that critics' taste in comedies tend not to reflect the general public.^[33] Vadim Rizov for IFC.com wrote an article titled "In defense of Freddy Got Fingered". He calls the film one of the great underrated comedies of the decade and says the film would go on to do better if it was released today, comparing it to the successful Adult Swim series Aqua Teen Hunger Force.^[34]

Director's cut

Green stated that he would like to do a "director's cut" DVD release of the film in 2011 to celebrate the 10th anniversary.^[10][35]

On March 9, 2010, on Loveline, Green officially announced that a director's cut would be released.^[36] In an answer to a question from a fan on his website tomgreen.com in December 2010, Green said that there was no progress yet in regards to the director's cut. In a Reddit "Ask Me Anything" (AMA) Green did on the website Reddit on October 17, 2013, Green responded to a question regarding the release of the director's cut with: "The studio didn't give me the footage to make the directors cut. I want to do it. If you contact New Regency or 20th Century Fox and tell them you want a directors cut [sic] maybe it will happen!"^[37]