9. Fred: The Movie (2010, Dir. Clay Weiner)
What Was The Comedy? A TV movie based on Fred Figglehorn, a successful YouTube character created and played by Lucas Cruikshank, who was 17 years old when the film was released.
Why Was It Appalling? Writing comedy is a tricky business that takes both life experience and talent that has been honed to the nth degree. Other than very rare exceptions like comedian Eros Vlahos who began his career at the age of thirteen, teenagers cannot write comedy. And although Fred: The Movie was written by seasoned comedy writer David A. Goodman, the bulk of it focused on solo skits performed and presumably formulated in part by Lucas Cruikshank. The film is generally just poorly written and performed as well as being one of those films that are just a string of random occurrences held together by the bare bones of a plot. Not to mention that Fred is an incredibly annoying and unsympathetic character (such as his reaction to a man speaking Spanish being Are you a spaceman?), and Cruikshanks digitally altered voice is worse than nails on a chalkboard.
Who Should Have Known Better? The Nickelodeon executives who thought that three minute YouTube videos by a teenager would automatically translate to a profitable TV movie.
Why Should They Have Known Better Even if they are popular, a series of three minute YouTube videos by a seventeen year old (who was fourteen when the character was first created) is incredibly unlikely to be a solid basis for a feature film. Runtimes of three minutes and eighty-five minutes are completely incompatible because, for a three minute video, only a small amount of material is needed. A feature length film requires considerably more depth than can be provided by expanding a one-note character. It would be like making a film about one of the characters from Little Britain. It just wont work because there isnt enough to build on and a huge amount of changes will be required to fit the new format that will most likely cause the appeal of the character to be lost in translation and thus alienate the films target market. And, as mentioned above, a 17 year-old is simply not capable of creating comedy that is of a high enough calibre to be broadcast on television or released in cinemas as the film was in the UK.