Movie Review – Drop Dead Fred

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Spoiler alerts 1991 There are quite a few movies about imaginary friends coming back to haunt people in adult-hood (Ted for example) but none are remotely as anarchic and startling as this cleverly scripted daring dark comedy. Phoebe Cates plays a troubled young woman who is unable to tear herself free of either her domineering mother (Marsha Mason) or her love rat boyfriend, played by Tim Madison. Her struggle is helped and hampered by her uninvited returning childhood friend, Drop Dead Fred, (Rik Mayall) Coming across as a mixture of Jim Carrey at his most manic and Dr Seuss’s Cat In The Hat, Fred vandalizes property, flicks the contents of his nostrils around, sinks an expensive houseboat and generally causes extreme destructive mayhem. It is of course Phoebe who is blamed for all the carnage he causes, and for a time she even ends up confined to a mental institution. Finally she gains the strength to break free of her Mum and the boyfriend even though it will mean she can no longer see Drop Dead Fred, though she does meet a little girl who has suddenly made him her new imaginary friend, just as Fred helps her trap a mean baby-sitter in an animal snare. Funny as Hell when Mayall is on screen but dull in scenes without his astonishing performance. Bizarrely, the film was promoted as a family movie but it is very much an adult issues comedy. There is a great cameo for Carrie Fisher but it is very much the late great Rik Mayall’s movie. Arthur Chappell