Released in 1991, Drop Fred is an American comedy starring Phoebe Cates as a woman who has just been left by her partner, and stars Rik Mayall as her repressed childhood imaginary friend/gnome/demon. The film is now mostly famous for the hurried and exhaustingly manic performance of English comedic actor Mayall as the red-haired/green-clad Fred. of manners.
Time is a healer. And Drop Fred is an entity that, with a changing and now more nuanced approach to mental health in general, can have its straitjacket ripped off and reanalyze the subject within. Upon release, the film was almost universally panned. Writing for The Chicago grandstand at the time, Gene Siskel had not lost love, as he felt sorry for the zero-star movie, calling it “easily one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen.” While that’s not to say Siskel was wrong – even with the movie still not really good – attitudes have changed and the late Rik Mayall’s Looney Tunes-like performance reveals a three-dimensional Bugs Bunny-adjacent stand-in for very human schizophrenia, regression and poor mental health that can all lead to one’s breakdown.
Lizzie is having a bad day
On the face of it, this is a disturbing movie for kids with plenty for parents to enjoy too (in the same vein as similar movies of the era like Roald Dahl’s The witches). Fred is the loud version of the frustrated mumbling we do when we’re denied something. He is the intrusive thought and devil on the shoulder of our main character, Lizzie. Since the incendiary incident (ridiculously) coincides with just one scene in which Lizzie divorces her partner, who has found someone new, her handbag and car is stolen and fired from her workplace, the woman deteriorates almost completely mentally and physically when before choosing to move back in with her controlling mother (Marsha Mason), or “The Mega Bitch” as Fred calls her.
Changing attitudes
Schizophrenia in its most basic form is a mental disorder in which the patient can hear or see things that are not there through hallucinations and delusions. In that, the movie makes it very clear that Fred is a big part of Lizzie and vice versa.
After Liz punches a violinist in a mall, she is apprehended and her mother takes her to a doctor who specializes in “imaginary friend syndrome.” Surrounded by kids who are all in the same boat as Lizzie, in a clever twist on the setup, Fred can interact with her imaginary friends, yet she can’t see them. When medication is finally prescribed, these imaginary friends shudder away in fear, knowing that they will rid their user of it, i.e. cure their beholder.
It is here that the scenario asks whether the right medication nullifies or even redeems their own imagination or childish wonder. Published by GM Goodwin via the Journal of Affective Disorders, after surveying 669 depressed patients in 2017, results suggested that 46% had side effects of “emotional blunting” from treatment. The movie treats Lizzie’s option as a very real fear (despite and ignoring the very real possible benefits of treatment).
With such heavy and serious tones at its core, the film deserves a reanalysis. Despite Drop Fred‘S childlike and childish approach to the story, underneath it is focused on a woman who is haunted and pushed to her limits by a rapidly escalating series of mishaps. Almost as if life is against her specifically, Lizzie’s role comes across as the straight guy to her anarchist imaginary friend. Fred’s (and Mayall’s performance for that matter) outwardly childish and gross personality was most panned upon release, but only makes sense for a fictional character originally conceived by Lizzie as an energetic baby with similarly infantile thoughts and humor.
Like it or not, Fred is unique to Lizzie and in turn wouldn’t exist without her. Other than that, no one can see Fred, so only assumes Lizzie is the one causing the chaos and talking to herself. In the end, while the movie itself is childish, it rolls with that, and like all good movies with a younger audience in mind, it doesn’t talk down the line because of that. Lizzie may seem “crazy” to everyone, but since she’s our central character, she’s our (albeit wobbly) voice of the story and the one we’re looking for all the time.
You have Mayall
And as a nasty version of Aladdin‘s Genie or (perhaps more appropriately) Hellraiser‘s cenobites, summoned in a time of need (and also trapped in a mystical box like Pinhead), Drop Fred is a cursed creature only out to cause mayhem, because that’s where his fun comes from – and the role is so fondly remembered because of the cast of Mayall in particular, who clearly enjoy the character’s trail of destruction.
Almost an English Jim Carrey, Mayall is obnoxious, goofy, exhaustingly fast and distinctly loud. His rubber band energy keeps the movie moving (and it’s no wonder). Drop Fred was originally pitched to director Tim Burton, starring Robin Williams). Much more known as a television actor via Youth And Black viperMayall’s few forays into the film world involved a strange collection of comedies, including a hapless hotel owner in Guest house Paradise (where his character’s name was “Richard Twat”), and Drop Fred in particular, remains probably his most well-known work on the big screen – and certainly to American audiences.
Rik Mayall died of a heart attack in 2014 at the age of 56. With such a lightning performance as the titular Drop Dead Fred, the film’s cult status was more than assured as fans remembered the performer.
Lasting impact, scars and a dead remake
Of course, at the end, Lizzie realizes that the Charles she’s been yearning for throughout the movie isn’t great, plain and simple, and that she’s much better off without him, finally being able to muster the strength to best her bullish mother. And only through Fred’s help can she find that strength. It is here that Fred and Lizzie complete their time together and Fred willingly continues.
To talk with Little white lies in 2021, director Ate De Jong will observe the effect that time has had on his own film.
“I appreciate it more now,” he continues, “At first I didn’t see its uniqueness. The layer I tried to put on is that childhood trauma is only overcome when you accept and forgive yourself. Over the years , many people have told me they have picked it up and I have found that the film has very therapeutic value Psychotherapists in California use it as an aid in their therapies for people with imaginary friends or who feel alienated from the world health was never discussed while we were making it. We were worried that New Line would cut the scene where Lizzie unwraps herself from her bed in the fantasy world, basically freeing herself. Now, I think it’s one of the best things in the movie it.”
And now, thankfully with no update on the upcoming Russell Brand starring Drop Fred remake (originally reported over a decade ago) that looks dead in the water, and this uniquely weird and gross imaginary friend will stick around for a bit longer.