Fred: The Movie
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 "Oh my gammit!"
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Fred: The Movie, stylized as FЯED: THE MOVIE, is a 2010 television comedy film based on Fred Figglehorn, a character created and played by Lucas Cruikshank for the latter's YouTube channel. Directed by Clay Weiner and written by David A. Goodman, the film was initially optioned for a theatrical release, although it instead premiered on Nickelodeon in the United States on September 18, 2010; the film was released theatrically on December 17, 2010, in the United Kingdom and Ireland. It is the first/third-to-last installment/film of the Fred Trilogy.
Plot
Fred Figglehorn embarks on a quest to find Judy, the girl of his dreams, with hopes she reciprocates her feelings when her family moves away to another suburb.
Why It Had the Epic Journey to Lose Judy
- To get the Deer-Out-Of-The-Woods: This film overall heavily butchers what made the original YouTuber good. The concept of placing a YouTuber as the star of feature film does not work out in real life when compared to the drawing board.
- An unoriginal, cliché, yet embarrassing "love"-kind of story (maybe) where Fred seeks to find his crush Judy in his "epic" journey. Instead in the films, it's just Fred travelling places to find Judy if he was "hitchhiking", not helping that previous media had a similar story before Fred: The Movie, and they do it far better.
- The film was extremely rushed; the script was finished in one week due to the deadline. According to Lucas, it was because the Nickelodeon executives were paranoid about Fred losing his popularity over time.
- Several characters, particularly Fred and his mother, are unlikable and others are also stereotypes with no character development whatsoever.
- Fred comes across as a stalker, mainly due to his... perspective of himself and his crush, Judy. This is evident through him constantly calling Judy his "girlfriend" and even saying at one point that he "calls her every night"... and yet we're not just supposed to root for this guy, but we're also supposed to find this cute and charming. Also, his voice can get extremely grating.
- Speaking of which, in addition to stalking Judy, Fred does a lot of heinous, amoral and unlikable acts for a protagonist which would fit right in the antagonistic role, whether it is unintentional because of his stupidity or outright on purpose. These include holding petty grudges against Kevin in a fit of jealousy because of how he and Judy sang together in school, fat-shames people when he threatens Kevin that he called the police so that the latter "would be jailed with the fattest people ever", throwing a temper tantrum over Judy moving away which isn't really that big of a deal to begin with, steals stuff from others in two separate scenes including attempting to steal a Pomeranian dog (which he mistakes for a squirrel) from a pet store, is (unintentionally) racist towards Chinese and Mexicans in three separate scenes of the film, and is sadistic towards his arch-enemies like Kevin. Worse, Fred is incapable of realizing that his actions are wrong, nor does he feel any remorse for his amoral actions, nor does he receive any sort of repercussions for his them, but instead, he outright gets rewarded for his horrible actions in the end, including finally getting Judy in the end, hence making him a huge Karma Houdini. YouTuber DazzReviews even points out that it feels like "the villain origin story."
- Beginning from this film, Fred Figglehorn has been flanderized from the original web series quite badly. He went from a hilarious, mostly tamed, smart, awkward, and a likable character in the original web series to a hyper, annoying, short-tempered, immature, and unlikable one for a protagonist beginning from this film to the point that he's a Jar Jar Binks. Not only that, unlike the web series where he was a 6-year-old boy which made his immature behavior and high-pitched voice understandable, beginning from this film not only he is aged-up into a 15-year-old teen, yet he still retains the same character traits and high-pitched voice as his original web counterpart except that these traits of his have been over-exaggerated to extremes. This makes him come off as an extremely immature teen with an unusually high-pitched voice, who NEVER acts his age and with a developed mental disorder, because apparently this is what the executives over at Nickelodeon perceived the Fred character as to begin with, which just shows how severely they had missed the point of the Fred Figglehorn character, which is what made him even more unlikable in the first place.
- In the original internet videos, Fred's high-pitched voice is achieved by digitally speeding-up the footage during post-production to give a chipmunk-like quality in his voice, which made him sound cute and comical. But beginning from this film, Fred's high-pitched voice is achieved rather by applying a high-pitch voice synthesizer to Lucas Cruikshank's voice during post-production instead of speeding-up the footage, which is what made his high-pitched voice sound even more annoying and grating in the first place.
- Kevin is another cliched bully who is a rip-off of Biff Tannen from Back to the Future as well as Kevin from Ed, Edd n Eddy, right down to having the same name, bully persona and headwear choices of the latter character. He is easily one of the worst characters through the whole series, where he and his friends never stop humiliating Fred, who sees him as an unpopular loser and a coward.
- Speaking for his friends, including his second-in command, Diesel, they are much like him and help him humiliate Fred.
- Fred's mother is a rude drunkard who neglects his son whenever she leaves and is too similar to Buck Cluck from Chicken Little.
- Kevin's mother, while friendlier towards Fred, barely isn't aware that her son, Kevin, is bullying him.
- Judy is a generic "girlfriend" and "crush" of Fred with no personality other than a bland, dumb doormat who is unaware that Fred has been stalking her the whole time and constantly defends Fred from Kevin's abuse and bullying without any further logic or reasoning.
- Bertha is just a bland "stereotypical emo girl" who lives next door to Fred.
- Fred comes across as a stalker, mainly due to his... perspective of himself and his crush, Judy. This is evident through him constantly calling Judy his "girlfriend" and even saying at one point that he "calls her every night"... and yet we're not just supposed to root for this guy, but we're also supposed to find this cute and charming. Also, his voice can get extremely grating.
- Much like Happy New Year, Charlie Brown, I Want a Dog for Christmas, Charlie Brown, and Chicken Little previously, the film is very mean-spirited as nearly everyone around Fred's universe, especially Fred's bully/rival Kevin, constantly abuses him for no particular reason other than to satisfy their own sick amusement, even if Fred Figglehorn himself doesn't even deserve it, going so far as to humiliate him by posting any embarrassing moment of Fred getting bullied by them on YouTube.
- For no discernible reason whatsoever, Fred getting all sorts of bad luck is said to be downright hilarious to them, despite that none of the predicaments Fred gets into are funny or comedic in the slightest but instead are unfunny, cruel, sad and depressing, and instead makes them all come off as unlikable sadistic jerks with an unjustified hatred of Fred.
- To add salt to the wound, Fred's mother never cares or stands up for her routinely abused son, and instead is extremely neglectful and abusive towards him, hence making her just as bad, if not worse, than Buck Cluck.
- Kevin constantly goes out of his way to bully Fred regardless of where he is, even going so far as to force his own mother to chauffeur him in her car under threats of telling his father (her ex-husband), which is extremely uncomfortable, disturbing and unsettling, even by bullying standards.
- The scene where Kevin posts a video of Fred's humiliation on YouTube doesn't make any sense because in reality, especially back when the film was made, cyberbullying is never allowed on YouTube since it violates the website's Community Guidelines. What makes it even more unacceptable is that this film is based on a web series on YouTube, since YouTuber Lucas Cruikshank should've known better when producing this film. You know you've messed up badly when a film based on a web series fails to get the YouTube tie-in correctly and understands its rules and guidelines.
- Fred himself isn't any better though, as because of the abuse he receives from his neighborhood, he retaliates against them in the most mean-spirited and sadistic ways possible, such as having sadistic fantasies of seeking revenge on the neighborhood bully Kevin, as well as tricking everyone at Judy's party, including Kevin, into an invitation to his party with "dis-invitations", only to reveal that they're not invited and evilly laughs in their faces when he tells them that they're not invited.
- Poor grasp of the source material: In the web series Fred mostly hated Judy and only liking her due to her prettiness, but this change could be due to him being 15 in this film instead of 6.
- Executive meddling: The original concept for the movie that Lucas Cruikshank thought of, was Fred going on a road trip across the United States, which is what could've been a more promising concept. However, Varsity Pictures rejected the idea since they thought it would be too expensive and the studio went on a completely different direction for this film, hence this film is the result we get.
- The film's promotional poster is incredibly lazy and boring to look as it depicts Fred screaming in horror while his body is stuck in the sand along with Judy waving, Kevin looking expressionless, and Bertha just smiling.
- Lame and unfunny attempts at humor, with notable examples being when Fred makes a cross-eyed facial expression when he vents out his frustrations at how he "had the worst Friday ever" because of Kevin's bullying, when Fred burns his tongue with melted cheese before freaking out, and the infamous scene where he vomits on Judy's party dress at her party.
- Some scenes in the film, most notably the scenes where Fred meets his long-lost friend Evan Weiss in the woods as well as the entire scene involving the highway security guard who has an unhealthy obsession with the dam, come across as creepy and unsettling rather than humorous.
- Some scenes in the film, particularly the scene where Fred steals a dog from a pet store which ends with the store owners accidentally pepper-spraying each other, come across as awkward and uncomfortable rather than humorous.
- Other attempts can be seen as offensive, with the biggest offender being Fred accusing a Mexican man of ruining his brain because he doesn't understand English.
- The film is basically plot-less and loose, and it is possible that the whole movie is basically 83 minutes of pure filler. Numerous scenes in the film serve nothing more than filler to pad out the running time.
- One example is where they constantly reuse a clip of Fred singing "Fire Burning" while dancing on his bed.
- The film overall is filled to the brim with heaps of pointless scenes which barely have anything to do with the plot nor do they have any purpose in the film whatsoever, all for the sake of filling up the running time in order to qualify as "feature length", with very few scenes here and there which are plot-relevant. In fact, nearly 90% of the film is literally full of filler. NO JOKE.
- One particular pointless scene, which is Fred's fantasy about Judy drowning in the pool and Kevin as the lifeguard saving her much to Fred's horror, literally has no reason to exist, since not only does it have any purpose to the plot, yet it's nothing but an excuse for the filmmakers to take advantage of Pixie Lott's sex appeal by putting her in a bikini as one of the attempts to get people to watch the film.
- Some of the pointless scenes of the film are even added in just so that the film has enough footage for Nickelodeon to create promotional material out of the film such as the film's promotional trailers and the promotional posters (like as pictured on the page).
- Some of the pointless scenes include all of Fred's fantasies involving his father as nothing more than an attempt at using John Cena, who portrays Fred's father, to promote the film as it's biggest selling point. Keep in mind though that John Cena's acting career at Nickelodeon was inspired by the Fred character, though.
- The entire montage of Fred and Bertha doing a fake party literally take up about three minutes long, despite that clearly two minutes of the film was spent on Fred and Bertha filming said fake party.
- Of all the pointless scenes found throughout the film, the infamous scene where Fred throws a massive temper tantrum upon realizing that Judy has moved can easily be considered the worst and arguably one of the worst scenes ever existed in movie history mainly due to how extremely annoying, ear-piercing, pointless, idiotic, and unfunny this sequence is.
- Due to the horrible amount of pointless filler, it makes the film feel more like an extended YouTube video rather than an actual feature film.
- There are many noticeable errors which are so blatantly obvious to even the most naïve viewer everywhere within the film as well, such as;
- When Fred uses the trampoline to get over the wall, it's an obvious stunt double with different colored hair.
- During the scene where Fred steals money from this mother's room when she's sleeping, despite that this scene is supposed to take place in the master bedroom of Fred's home, it instead looked as if it was actually filmed in a hotel room, as the noticeable sign on the door is what's highlighting the very fact that said scene is filmed in an actual hotel room to be incredibly obvious to even the most naïve viewer.
- When the number 7 bus which Fred takes to stops at its final destination which is at an aquatic center, once Fred gets off the bus it turns out that he arrived at a public swimming pool with a man-made beach.
- When Fred struggles to get himself out of the sand at the swimming pool, it clearly shows that Fred only has a measly two inches of sand covered on top of him.
- The map showing the forest which Fred travels to clearly doesn't have a visible dam found anywhere on it despite the previous scene taking place at a dam.
- Despite that Kevin's YouTube channel KevSmellMyFart is said to have only six videos, however, only one video is available in his YouTube channel, which is the one he and the other party guests filmed at Judy's party. Not only that, Kevin's YouTube channel KevSmellMyFart is said to have been active for four years, and the video he uploaded is said to be uploaded four years prior, despite that the incident filmed and uploaded on YouTube is fairly recent.
- The YouTube video showing Fred vomiting over Judy at her party, despite being filmed in 9:16 portrait mode on the party guests' cellphones, is however shown in 16:9 landscape widescreen mode, meaning that the entire video clip on YouTube directly reused a clip from the film itself.
- The movie never indicates that Fred is fantasizing about something.
- Worse still, the movie tries to cram in as much fantasy sequences from Fred just for the sake of padding the film to feature-length.
- Fred's fantasies about Judy are nonsensical, as he stalks her just to sing with her. Plus, for the majority of the film, Judy doesn't even show much interest in Fred at all, until the very end of the film.
- While unintentional, the film is also racist towards both Chinese and Mexican people, due to how Fred constantly freaks out at their presence and heavily misinterprets everything they do and how they act.
- Fred freaks out at the sight of his Chinese next-door neighbors who moved in into Judy's old house, as well as falsely accuses them for kidnapping Judy, when in reality, Judy moved out of that house and the Chinese family just moved in in her place.
- Fred accusing a Mexican man of ruining his brain because he only speaks Spanish and doesn't understand English.
- At all times, the film lacks subtlety and constantly talks down to its audience, such as when Fred introduces the people and neighborhood around him, not only does he tell the audience about it, yet there are even captions appearing onscreen each time they are described out loud by Fred himself, without even allowing the audience to pick it up for themselves.
- An incredible repetitive running gag of scenes where it looks like Fred wins, only to relieve that the scenes are actually dreams made up by Fred due to him sleeping, with the latter waking up in a mess, they repeat that joke three times though out the film.
- The film has a really bad message about becoming popular at high school, "If you want to make it, fake it" when Fred and Bertha throw a fake party.
- The acting is rather lazy and poor, particularly with Lucas Cruikshank as Fred as well as Pixie Lott as his love interest Judy.
- Very cheap and laughably poor editing and production values, even by Nickelodeon TV movie standards, including (but are not limited to):
- The constant jump-cuts between certain scenes when Fred breaks the fourth wall, which can get really distracting since these abrupt cuts often come out of nowhere.
- The laughably bad quality animatronic used for the deer in the forest (complete with atrocious lip-syncing) in the scene where Fred walks through the forest.
- The infamous scene of Fred thinking that his head falling off which comes off as very poor and unconvincing due to how it looked like his head was literally stuffed inside his shirt.
- All the bird's eye view shots of Fred's neighborhood seem to be taken directly off low-resolution images from Google Earth, which looks incredibly out-of-place compared to all the filmed footage of this film.
- The film's extremely poor and unconvincing attempts of green screen by superimposing stock footage over the actors filmed over a green screen, such as Fred's fantasizing of himself and Judy singing together in a car with autotune and the entire "screaming montage" involving Fred running on the roller-coaster tracks.
- To add salt to the wound, it is a $3.4 million television film with some of the worst production values of any television film ever, even for Nickelodeon's TV movie standards.
- The film is filled to the brim with heaps of illogical scenes, even for Fred standards, such as:
- Fred is somehow able to automatically figure out Judy's new address on his own home computer without even finding out her actual address, as well as how zooming in through the window of a Google Maps scan of said house is able to reveal her house's previous occupant.
- How Fred managed to survive through getting cleaned in the car wash without a car completely unharmed and still comes out perfectly dry in one scene.
- How Kevin shoving a slice a pizza on Fred's shirt causes Fred to vomit all over Judy at her party in the film's climax.
- For some reason, Fred refreshing the video from Judy's party on Kevin's YouTube account seems to increase its viewer count, when in fact it doesn't even work this way on YouTube in real life.
- Some scenes and shots are very disgusting, such as:
- Fred eating a fly in the man-made beach, at one point, he sticks his tongue out and the half-chewed corpse is seen on it.
- The climax of Fred vomiting on Judy’s party dress.
- Fred's fake party showing multiple people vomiting.
- Despite the film's intense negative reputation, it still manages to spawn two sequels and a TV show, hence showing how Nickelodeon is blind to criticism and negative reception of their Fred franchise until at least 2012 when they finally realized this truth when Fred: The Show failed miserably.
Qualities That Had the Epic Journey to Find Judy
- Jennette McCurdy and Siobhan Fallon Hogan’s respective performances as Bertha and Fred’s Mom are passable.
- The quotes, "JOHN CENA!!!" and "Somebody call 911!" are the best part of the movie.
- There are some funny scenes here and there, such as the laundromat scene and the scene where Fred tries to dig to Judy's house, but ends up digging to someone else's yard in China, while ridiculously unrealistic, is funny.
- The songs can be enjoyable, particularly the one in the opening.
- As mentioned above in WIHTEJTLJ#1, the concept of a Fred movie is good on paper, despite being heavily butchered from what made the YouTube series good.
Videos
Reception
Fred: The Movie received extremely negative reviews from critics and audiences alike, who criticize it for its nonsensical plot, extremely unlikable lead character, and many poor attempts at trying to be funny. It currently sits at a 0% critic rating and a 38% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, as well as an average rating of 2/10 on IMDb.
UK film critic Mark Kermode listed this movie at Number two for his Top 5 Worst Films of 2010 list.
Trivia
- This is the first feature film to be based on an internet video series on YouTube.
- Before the huge success of the movie, Nickelodeon financed the production of Fred: The Show and produced Marvin Marvin, another show which starred Lucas Cruikshank.
- According to Cruikshank, the entirety of the film's production lasted a little under a year; this would explain the low quality of the film.
- Miranda Cosgrove was offered the role of Judy but turned it down due to scheduling conflicts.
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Categories:
- 2010s films
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- Terrible grasp on the source material
- Films with a 0% rating on Rotten Tomatoes
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- Featured on TV Tropes' So Bad, It's Horrible
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- Fred