STEALING HARVARD: Tom Green TRIES to make a comeback?

[Chadzilla]

While Pearl Harbor cost 150 million to make (WHY?) and it only grossed 200 then it's a disappointment. plain and simple.  If it went over by twenty million then it cost 170 million simply to make.  Factor in several tens of millions of dollars in marketing (those commercials, poster, banners, billboards, radio spots, etc all cost money to get out there) this move probably set the studio back more than 200 million.  Now factor in that you are talking GROSS profits.  The studio only nets half of the profit after all the checks are cashed (if its lucky).  So while the movie grossed 200 million domestically, it only MADE 100 million or so (same thing with Spiderman, which cost some 90 million to make, while it grossed in excess of 400 million, the studio only got 200 million on it, tops).  Foreign revenues are also shrinking, thus driving many independent studios to rely on cable and video markets even more.

I swear, if the same accountants than ran Hollywood were running the Government, we'd never have budget problems.

[J.R.]

Hollywood grosses are a relative matter. Spider-Man technically made the most money this summer, about four times its cost. My Big Fat Greek Wedding, on the other hand, looks to make about $100M, but it only cost $5M, so it's technically the most successful film of the year because it made back twenty times its budget. So you see, a huge budget ensures neither quality nor great success.

[mr. henry]

chris K. i kind of agree. i definitley don't expect another feature film directorial debut. i just meant that i'd like to see a "serious" effort---(read: try to produce an actual movie). either a movie or whatever...something to compare the apparent lack of trying in FGF...(and "goldmember" was considered an unusable title?)

i caught green's post cancer shows and the japan shows and judging by those he has "lost it."

i agree green's old act isn't relevent any more. jackass is still pushing boundaries----that movie should be an interesting experiment, i think...

later,
mr. henry

[josh patrick]

What the hell is wrong with fgf?

[Chris K.]

The reason why FREDDY GOT FINGERED sucked was because it was not funny and technically inept. The humor was poor, the performances were stale, the pacing was bad, and it had no plot or storyline.

First we have to endure Tom Green playing with a horse's penis. As if that is not enough, Green pulls another bad cock joke in which he plays around with an elephant's member. I don't get it? If you are going to make a joke it has to HAVE A POINT! Maybe if his character had some obsession with animal sexuality and was given a more wide explanation, it would have been funny. But it isn't.

Green goes as far as to show him gutting a dead deer so he can wear it like a coat in order to understabd his characters (after all, Green plays a cartoonist). Peter Jackson could create better gross-out than this bastard! I will admit that I laughed at Green getting hit by the truck during this scene, but I laughed because it would be funny if Green was really killed by a hit-and-run.

Now for the plot. Okay, so some comedies don't have too strong of a plot. But a plot is needed just the same, no matter how unhinged or disjointed the story may be. FREDDY GOT FINGERED's plot ranges from "What the hell?" to "What's the damn point?" Why does Green's girlfriend need to pleasured by being hit on the legs with a bamboo stick? Is their any point to Green's obsession with cocks of the animal species? What is the point about Green's girlfriend giving him a blow job? What's Drew Barrymore doing in this atrocity? What's the point when Green take his father (played by Rip Torn) to Iran just to prove him something? What is with that kid who keeps getting injured who runs into certain dangerous objects? Like I said, the humor has to have a point. Even without the explanations or flawed logic, one would suspect that the film would still be funny just the same (I am sure that is what Tom Green and his co-writer Derek Harve thought as well). Hardly, it looks more like a patchwork of certain scenes from other planned projects that we can't tell if the scenes are meant to be funny or not and therefore it's hard for us to laugh. Nothing at all is funny in FREDDY GOT FINGERED. The only thing that's funny is Green's career went downhill after this little atrocity and I still think that is not enough punishment!

And I will tell you this, when I saw it in the theatre NOBODY LAUGHED. And the patrons were the same age as I am (18 years and up)!

Josh, if you loved FREDDY GOT FINGERED that's fine by me. But the rest of us just don't seem to find him all original or innovative.

[josh patrick]

Yeah its a bad movie! dont take things so damn seriously. i didnt love it i just thought it was sort of funny and stupid, everything tom green is

[Chris K.]

Looking at it clearly, I might have taken it a bit too seriously and if so sorry. But if you were in my shoes and saw the film in it's hideous form, wouldn't you be somewhat shocked to see that some people actually like FREDDY GOT FINGERED. But then, I like Peter Jackson's BRAINDEAD and my school associates are shocked that I like the film since they are not too pleased with the film at all.

But hey, go for whatever floats your boat, Josh.

[mr. henry]

chris K, i feel your pain over the movie...

the fact it was so TERRIBLE is exactly my point from earlier, that FGF is no scary movie or american pie (movies that still tried to be funny)...it took "shock humor" way over the edge by removing humor and replacing it with a sorta pseudo-humor/anti-humor that left us with an intolerable (we agree on that) mess...millions were spent on a nearly unwatchable movie...it was absurd...almost an arthouse anti-commercial statement...i know we disagree on this, but i think that's what green was shooting for...anyone that goes from canadian cable access to marrying drew barrymore to a medium budget movie in four years has some saavy smarts.

and i think his work on road trip was pretty good...although i admit he was basically playing himself (like howard stern did in private parts). road trip is a new teenage classic...the snake part still cracks me up.

L8r,
mr. henry

[jmc]

I wouldn't say it's a comeback, since FREDDY was only last year.  Most actors only make one or two movies a year.

[Chadzilla]

Greta Van Suswhatever interviewed Green in a fluff piece for Stealing Harvard.  Whether or not he is funny I leave to others, but the persona he put forth was soft spoken and polite (and he was REAL uncomfortable talking about with the whole marriage to Drew thing, so much so I felt bad that Greta kept hammering away at him about it - I wanted to shout "The man is obviously uncomfortable talking about this still painful event, LEAVE HIM ALONE!" - then again celebs invite these things when they do these interviews).

[lester1/2jr]

Jim- pearl harbour and Waterworld weren't ARTISTIC succeses do you think?  A movie being known as a "bomb" can affect the careers of everyone involved.  Tom Green was on Stern the other day.  He was really funny ( and the Leno appearance was apparently a classic, I hope they rerun it) but the movie looks really stupid.  The dog attacking his nuts is dumb.  all the "Whoaaaaaaaaah" type humour is dumb.,  Imagine making a movie so bad your wife leaves you?

[Chadzilla]

Frankly the guy started irritating me when everybody at work started imitating his role as Chad in Charlie's Angels.  They would come up to me and say "How's...the Chad?"

First all that Florida ballot chad thing, then that.

Being named Chad sucks some times.

[jmc]

I wonder how much PEARL HARBOR made on home video and foreign sales [actually, probably not much in other countries, especially Japan!]  The domestic grosses are really just the beginning of how much a movie really makes.  Even David Lynch's DUNE ended up making money when you counted the foreign revenue [actually, everything he's made has made money due to that--that's why you continue to see him making films.]  

The thing about PEARL HARBOR, I doubt the average viewer who saw it hated it as much as the critics and the uppity moviegoers like me who tend to not like that kind of film anyway.   If it was that terrible of a film, I don't think they'd be doing multiple DVD releases of it.  You don't see that for FREDDY GOT FINGERED.
Most of the people who saw PEARL HARBOR probably liked it okay, but no one's gonna remember it next year when it will be replaced by the next big blow-em-up movie.  That's why I didn't put in on my worst 10 list.  I don't think it's really any worse than most other films of its type [just kinda tasteless] and I think it's too forgettable to really be considered a heavyweight Bad Movie.  It's just mediocre.

[Chris K.]

jmc wrote:
>
> If it [PEARL HARBBOR] is that terrible of a film, I don't think
> they'd be doing multiple DVD releases of it.  

Actually, from what I heard the sales of the first PEARL HARBOR 2 disk DVD were so poor that Disney decided to release the so-called "Director's Cut" (which, I might add, is really not worth it since it's additional dialouge and gore scenes, each unconvincing and bad) early to make their sales better. But during the time when the first DVD of PEARL HARBOR was on the failing list, Disney tried pairing it up with ARMAGEDDON as a two pack (it was even advertised on TV) in order to get the audience's attention. Unfortunately, it wasn't successful.

As for the dislike of PEARL HARBOR, at the imdb.com their are reviews from the average Joe that didn't like the film either while some others do. It makes The Worst Film on my list because it was as you said "mediocre" as well as unappealing to my eyes. And boring, too.

[lester1/2jr]

Also, to say it didn't quite make your top ten worst of all time isn't really a compliment.