Frankie Freako

(2024) ***1/2

Is a movie that's *trying* to be Stupid And Annoying, and succeeds at being both, therefore a good movie? It really depends on who's making it, and what kind of humor lands with you. Frankie Freako is Stupid And Annoying. If you want some idea of how Stupid, notice that the can the dude in the picture above is holding. It's a soda. It's called Fart. Fart Soda (with caffeine). The Freakos spend the entire movie drinking the stuff. This isn't Oscar Wilde, is what I'm saying. If you want some idea of how Annoying, know that the movie is about this guy and his friends, who come to your house and do this kind of shit to it.

So what kinds of Stupid And Annoying work? I honestly couldn't give a short explanation. Anyone who has seen both Zoolander and the Hustler/Jenna Jameson horror comedy Zombie Strippers, could probably say that there's a difference in quality between those two movies, even without being able to do anything more than name jokes that landed in one and jokes that failed in the other. Frankie Freako is definitely more like Zoolander, although I actually think a better comparison would be Dicks: The Musical. Or if you haven't seen that, it's like you're watching an episode of MST3K and that audio on the original movie cuts out for some reason, so Joel and the bots have to make up their own dialogue: the people in the movie say and do terribly Stupid And Annoying things, but their lines are written by smart, funny people who know the difference.

Frankie Freako, and two fellow Freakos, Boink Pardo and Dottie Dunko, rain wild-party chaos on Conor Sweeney (whose real name is, I swear to god, also Conor Sweeney) and his square, predictable life. It's not like the Freakos don't warn him ahead of time. He called their 900 number and they asked if he was ready to party and he said yes. That's on him now. 

It's important (god, like *really* important) to be able to contextualize what it's like watching the Freako chaos unfold against what it's like watching Conor's normal life before the Freakos get there. He works, what a person in not Freako-adjacent world would identify as, a really dorky job and, while utterly convinced he's being creative as fuck, he spiffs up a work presentation by making his coworkers wear party hats. Then he goes home to his lovely girlfriend Kristina (real name: Kristy Wordsworth), and gets as far as holding her hand for five seconds before collapsing in satisfaction on the bed, oblivious to Kristina's disappointment, to watch his favorite antiquing show, on which the host spends minutes explaining to clients why their item is cute before merely telling them that it's worthless. If this were normal life, Conor would be single, fast. This is farce, so Kristina is still there like normal the next morning. 

Does that sound stupid? Like it would be a really, really stupid and annoying movie to watch? Guess what: I already fuckin *told* you that's what it was. That's on you now. Someone else might watch this and want their 85 minutes back. I, myself, snort laughed throughout most of it, my palm on my forehead. I make no promises either way.