The film stars Green alongside Rip Torn, Marisa Coughlan, Eddie Kaye Thomas and Julie Hagerty.

Green stars in the film as a childish slacker who wishes to become a professional cartoonist while dealing with his abusive father's behavior.

The title of the film refers to a plot point where Green's character falsely accuses his father of sexually abusing his brother, the eponymous Freddy.

Unemployed 28-year-old cartoonist Gordon "Gord" Brody leaves his parents' home in Portland, Oregon, to pursue his lifelong ambition of obtaining a contract for an animated television series.

His parents, Jim and Julie, give him a Chrysler LeBaron which he drives to Los Angeles and starts work at a cheese sandwich factory to make money.

After 18 months in captivity, Gord and Jim return to the United States, where a huge crowd—including Betty, Darren, and a protestor holding a sign asking “When the fuck is this movie going to end?”—welcomes them home.

As an extra on the DVD release, Green also included a version of the ending, where a small child character gets sliced by the airplane propeller, which he had edited to secure an R rating.

[8] 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.

[14] 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.

"[17] Along with Ebert, his At the Movies co-host, Richard Roeper, 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".

[18] In 2003, Roeper put it on his list of his forty least favorite films of all time to that point, reiterating his dislike of Green's comedy in general.

[19] Film critic Leonard Maltin gave Freddy Got Fingered a "BOMB" rating in his eponymous Movie Guide.

He expressed views of the film similar to those of Ebert and Roeper: "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.

[25] 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".

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.

[27] 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.

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.

"[31] 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.

[35] 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.

[35] 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.