To be completely honest, I don’t watch movies all that often. Not out of principle or anything, I’m honestly just lousy at ever getting around to them, so usually by the time I see a film it’s already been recommended by a bunch of people whose opinions and tastes I trust. The end result of this is that I don’t really end up watching bad movies, which might make me the worst choice to write about awful films for this column. So, I got researching, and found a film with 0% approval on Rotten Tomatoes, based around the most execrably annoying Youtube character of all time that isn’t named PewDiePie.
Fred.
I’ve never seen this film before, so what you’re about to get is my live reactions to Fred: The Movie. I’m not looking forward to this at all. Well, reluctantly, let’s watch Fred: The Movie. I try not to swear too much on the site, but I suspect that the only words that will accurately describe my feelings towards this film by the end of it will be four-letter ones, so er…language warning, I guess.
Twenty seconds into the film, the eponymous hero makes his entrance, screaming “HI, IT’S FREEEEEEEDDDDDD!!!” in a voice that was engineered in a shady government laboratory somewhere specifically to make every single bit of the ear and brain bleed.
We’re not starting off on a good foot. Please tell me it can’t get worse.
“IT’S FRIDAY! OH MY GOD SAY THAT FAST IT SOUNDS LIKE FRED-DAY! FRIDAY, FRED-DAY, FRIDAY, FRED-DAY!”
…It got worse.
Okay, so, apparently Fred is infatuated with a girl named Judy, to the point of stalking her. Because you know, his 16-year old Justin Bieber haircut and brain-splittingly shrill voice wasn’t enough to make us hate this wee tosspot already, the writers threw outright stalking onto this irritating pile of awfulness.
Look at his stupid fucking face. You want to punch it too, I know you do.
Fred tells us “If I don’t get food in my body then there’s no blood in my head and then my head will fall off because there’s no blood in it!”, followed by a Wilhelm scream and a smash cut sight ‘gag’ where a mannequin head falls off of his shoulders while his head is very obviously tucked inside his shirt. An adult wrote this. A grown-ass adult. An adult man sat down at a computer one day and wrote this scene, and collected a paycheck for it.
Moving on and…Fred has now basically creamed his pants over cheese. Christ, I know this is lowest-common-denominator, bottom-of-the-barrel garbage for dumb kids, but the gag is literally ‘Fred likes cheese’. We’re operating on the humour level of a goddamn lolcat post from 2004 here, folks.
I bet even kids want to punch his face in. Christ, just look at it. And this is coming from someone who sees one of the world’s most punchable faces every time I pass a reflective surface.
As time wears on, seemingly taking eons to pass even a second of this torture, there’s a one-minute long ‘gag’ of Fred burning his tongue and screeching “HOT CHEESE” incessantly while trying to cool his mouth down, which of course he does with a garden hose. Again, a grown-ass man wrote this. I am seven minutes into this film. Seven minutes of hell. I cannot do this.
Um. Fred just asked “Dad, what do you think I should do?”, and a chair swivels round dramatically to reveal…
JOHN CENA.
Not John Cena the person, playing a role. No. John Cena the wrestler, wearing all of his WWE merch.
I- I’m- just- um- I- where did that Morgan’s go?
I’m actually laughing now. I can’t believe that Fred: The Movie got a laugh out of me. Maybe I’m laughing because I’m incredibly confused at everything going on right now and the sheer absurdity of the situation, or maybe I’m laughing to attempt to dispel the sheer existential horror that this film not only exists but got two fucking sequels and people got paid to inflict this monstrosity on the Earth.
Fred goes on to detail his plan to sing with Judy to win her over from his rival Kevin. He caps off this plan by saying “And then she’ll forget all about Kevin cause harmonising with me will be so much smoother…”
That’s this gobshite’s attempt at a seductive face. I had to witness that thing so I’m forcing you lot to as well. That’s the last straw, I can’t do this. I’m not strong enough.
Ten minutes forty-nine seconds.
In 10:49, Fred: The Movie made me lose my faith in just about everything bar the healing power of Captain Morgan’s rum. I don’t care that it’s meant to be for kids, I wouldn’t ever show this to a child unless I specifically wanted it to have an existential crisis at the tender age of 4 and 3/4. Grown men wrote, greenlit, cast, directed, shot and edited this film. And if that doesn’t prove beyond a doubt that art is meaningless when literal vomit like this has been permanently, inerasably scored on humanity’s record, I don’t know what will.
God is dead, and Fred killed him.
