Director Ate de Jong
Starring Phoebe Cates, Rik Mayall & Marsha Mason
Rated PG
Score 6/6
A young woman finds her already unstable life rocked by the presence of a rambunctious imaginary friend from childhood.
For those of you playing along at home, supposedly when the cinematic powers where casting Drop Dead Fred they offered the role to Robin Williams was offered the role of Drop Dead Fred, but instead chose to play Peter Banning in Hook also if the trivia pages are anything to go by the director’s chair was offered to Tim Burton, it would have been interesting to see the direction that Burton might have taken the dream sequence scene in the third act of the movie. The decision to watch Drop Dead Fred wasn’t one of those spur of the moment decisions, I think that it has been more than a few years since I last watched Fred. No, the DVD hasn’t been sitting in the pile of DVDs I have to watch for the past few months. I’ve missed Drop Dead Fred’s 30th anniversary (that was last year) and apparently back in 1991 in Australia Fred was released on November 14 (so I don’t even have that going for me). All I’ll say is that I stumbled across this one while I was in a second-hand DVD store. Even with how old the movie is there is something charming about Drop Dead Fred that will make you laugh, cry and have you smiling by the time the credits rolled. Both Phoebe Cates as Elizabeth and Rik Mayall as Drop Dead Fred gave brilliant performances. I loved how seamlessly Mayall was able to shift from between maniac and father figure. I loved the scene Mayall had with the other imaginary friends. It was also interesting to see who the filmmakers foreshadowed the influence of Elizabeth’s mother over her life through the use of the staircase. Ashley Peldon was adorably sweet as the young Elizabeth. I loved the dream sequence and it must have been because it was so long since I last watched Drop Dead Fred. I was a little surprised to see that Carrie Fisher was cast in this.
On a side note I have to ask when making Pants Pie, do you bake the pie in the pants or do you just serve it in them?