There are some things in this life that are inevitable. We are born, we live, we die. For me, one of those things was watching Freddy Frogface. Anyone who's followed my blog thus far knows that, at the end of each month, I watch something that I know is going to be absolutely terrible. It adds a little spice here and there while keeping things varied, ensuring that each month isn't just a few consecutive weeks of "here's this movie I watched for the first time, it was great". Over a year ago, when I was first starting this blog, this was the movie that inspired me to dedicate the last week of each month to a work of pure garbage. No one had heard of this movie, let alone actually watched it. Why would they? And yet there it sat, added to my Netflix queue out of morbid curiosity, taunting me. The review you are reading is quite literally a year in the making. At long last, the time has come and I have done the unthinkable. I have watched Freddy Frogface.
The plot. Good lord, what can I even say about the plot? This whole experience felt like a dream. Not a good dream, by any means, but not quite a nightmare either. Have you ever had one of those dreams that isn't fantastical, but is more just... off? Something that comes to you right before you wake up feeling clammy and gross, with bad morning breath and a crick in your neck? That is the kind of dream that Freddy Frogface is. Like most dreams, I'm forgetting more and more of it as the seconds slip past, so I'm going to do my absolute best to recount what I saw before the majority of this thing is gone from my mind forever.
Taking place somewhere vaguely European, the story follows a young boy named Victor. Victor is kind of a vindictive little punk who makes trouble for himself and those around him, so I honestly don't care so much that he's constantly bullied and beaten by what appears to be a mentally-handicapped young man at least twice Victor's age named Freddy. When the circus comes to town (advertising a talent show that anyone can enter), Victor gets the bright idea to put together an act that involves his dog, Sausage, basically playing fetch and doing flips. Now you're probably thinking that this sounds like a fairly cut-and-dry plot with little to no conflict. And you'd be right. Despite this, the movie is 84 nigh-unendurable minutes long. It's the plot of a twenty minute children's television cartoon stretched out to roughly an hour and a half and it works out about as well as you'd expect.
I'm not sure I can summarize in words how much of an unpleasant experience this movie was. Everything about it is ugly, inside and out. The character designs are nauseating; everyone has stringy hair or a snaggle-toothed grimace or dead, unfeeling eyes (or in the case of most of the cast, all of the above). The lip-sync is a joke, not that the dialog is all that inspired, and the whole thing is honestly quite mean-spirited. We don't have anyone to root for here. Victor is a charmless, spiteful little jerkass, his best friend is a doting whiner, and said friend's cousin is about as bland as a slice of whitebread floating in a puddle of tap water. Aside from that, the movie features a surprising amount of swearing, alcohol, child abuse, animal abuse, and things that would probably result in death (or, failing that, severe trauma). At one point, Victor tricks Freddy into getting stuck on the blade of a windmill several stories above the ground. He then leaves him there until a drunken blacksmith arrives and almost murders Freddy with his shotgun. It's just a wholly unpleasant experience for just about every reason imaginable.
What else can be said about Freddy Frogface? It's dreck. Confusing, nauseating, unlikable dreck. The only modicum of enjoyment to be gleaned from watching this thing comes in the form of the weird European attempts at English slang; hearing Freddy refer to people as "ass-bobs" and cowardly characters get called "chicken poops" is at the very least entertaining in an ironic, "I can't believe I'm actually watching this" sort of way. So now, I finally have my closure. I watched Freddy Frogface, it was absolutely repugnant, and now I never have to experience it ever again.
Check back next year when I finally get around to reviewing Ivan the Incredible.
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