FREDDIE AS FRO 7 (1992)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*

FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, cosmological*


This British kiddie-cartoon sports a wealth of well-known voice-actors-- Ben Kingsley, Billie Whitelaw and Brian Blessed-- but the script, co-written by director Jon Aceveski, is lame beyond words.

The "F.R.O.7" of the title is an incoherent play on both the word "frog" and "James Bond, 007," because it features what is presumably the world's only secret-agent frog. Aceveski devotes a third of the film building up the idea of how "Freddie" became a humanoid frog, though nothing is said about how he managed to become a French secret agent in a world where he's the only anthropomorphic being. But no "Howard the Duck" alienation for Freddie the Frog; he's a walking caricature of "the French Romeo," making passes at a lady secret agent while he gets his new assignment. It seems a dictator, El Supremo, has been stealing national monuments for some nefarious purpose, so Freddie and a couple of human agents are assigned to take the evildoer down. Perhaps to justify his secret-agent status, Freddie is actually seen fighting with the villains a few times, combining kung fu with frog-fu (taking really big leaps high in the air).

Like the other features covered here, FREDDIE should be relentlessly unfunny to anyone but a really young kid who's never heard any of the jokes before. That said, a really young kid probably wouldn't appreciate the film's main joke: that Freddie is a "frog" not only by virtue of his green skin, but also because he's French. "Frog," "frog-eaters"-- get it? The oddest thing in FREDDIE is as follows: he gets turned into a frog by his sorceress-aunt back in medieval times. Centuries later, Freddie "magicks" himself into the form of a humanized frog, and somehow escapes the perils of anti-frog prejudice in order to become an agent of the French secret service. Finally, he learns that his sorceress-aunt is still alive, partnered with El  Supremo--and though Freddie gets even with his aunt by foiling her plot, never once does he consider getting her to reverse her spell and make him human again.

Maybe, as Kermit memorably said, "it ain't easy bein' green." But if that's not really the way you were born, and you got the chance to stop being green-- why wouldn't that be the first thing on your mind?

NOTE: Wikipedia speculates that, had there been a sequel to the flop frog-flick, the hero might have confronted his aunt again and been restored to humanity. Still, it's idiotic that, in Freddie's only outing, the idea of re-humanization doesn't even occur to him.