![]() ![]() Outside of that, no one can see Fred, and thus only assumes that Lizzie is the one causing the chaos, and talking to herself. ![]() Like it or not, Fred is unique to Lizzie and in turn, wouldn't exist without her. Fred's (and Mayall's performance for that matter) outwardly childish and crude personality was panned most upon release but only makes sense for a fictional character originally dreamed up by Lizzie as an energetic infant with likewise infantile thoughts and humor. Almost like life is specifically against her, Lizzie's role comes off as the straight man to her anarchic imaginary friend. Despite Drop Dead Fred' s childlike and puerile approach to the story, underneath it's focused on a woman put upon by a quickly escalated series of mishaps and pushed to breaking point. With such heavy and serious tones at its heart, the movie deserves re-analysis. ![]() The film treats Lizzie's option as a very real fear (in spite of and ignoring the very real possible benefits of treatment). Goodwin via the Journal of Affective Disorders, after surveying 669 depression sufferers in 2017, the results suggested that 46% had side effects of "emotional blunting" from treatment. It's here that the screenplay asks does proper medication negate, or even rid one of, their own imagination or childlike sense of wonder. When finally prescribed medication, these embodiments of imaginary friends shudder away in fear knowing that they will rid their user of them, i.e. Related: The Best Movies and TV Shows That Put a Spotlight on Mental HealthĪfter Liz beats a violinist in a shopping mall she is apprehended and her mother takes her to a doctor who specializes in "imaginary friend syndrome." Surrounded by children all in the same boat as Lizzie, in a clever twist on the setup, Fred can interact with her fellow imaginary friends, and yet she can't see them. Writing for The Chicago Tribune at the time, Gene Siskel had no love lost as he pitied the movie with zero stars and called it "easily one of the worst films I've ever seen." While that's not to say that Siskel was wrong - even now the film still really isn't particularly good - attitudes have changed and the late Rik Mayall's Looney Tunes-esque performance reveals a three-dimensional Bugs Bunny-adjacent stand-in for very human schizophrenia, regression, and poor mental health that could all lead to a person's breakdown. On release, the film was pretty much universally panned. And Drop Dead Fred is an entity that, with a changing and now more nuanced approach to mental health in general, can have its straight jacket torn off and its subject inside re-analyzed. Most famed now for English comic actor Mayall's hurried and exhaustingly manic performance as the red-haired/green-suited Fred, the movie itself has found a second lease in life through its take on mental health in the most creative, appropriately imaginative, and colorful of ways. Released in 1991, Drop Dead Fredis an American comedy starring Phoebe Cates as a woman having just been left by her partner, and featured Rik Mayall as her repressed childhood imaginary friend/imp/demon. ![]()
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