Taglines: Unusual, Uncontrollable, Unleashed, Unreal.
Drop Dead Fred movie storyline. Elizabeth Cronin is an unassertive and repressed woman, domineered by her controlling mother, Polly. While taking her lunch break from work, she visits her husband, Charles, from whom she is separated, hoping to sort out their problems. He reasserts his desire for a divorce and says that he is in love with another woman named Annabella. While she is at the public phone, a man walking down the street breaks into her car to steal her purse.
Then her car is stolen as well. Forced to run back to work (at the courthouse), she arrives late and loses her job. While leaving the courthouse she runs into an old friend, Mickey, who brings up childhood memories they shared, which includes memories of Elizabeth’s childhood imaginary friend, Drop Dead Fred. Mickey explains how only Elizabeth could see Drop Dead Fred, and everybody else thought she was crazy.
Since losing her job Elizabeth moves back into her mother’s home. While rummaging through past belongings in her childhood bedroom closet, Elizabeth finds a taped-shut jack-in-the-box. She places the box by the window and gets into bed. Through a series of flashbacks, it is revealed that while he caused havoc for her, he also gave her happiness and a release from her oppressive mother.
Elizabeth wakes up to find the jack-in-the-box slowing playing music. She removes the tape and the box continues to play itself, faster and faster, until Drop Dead Fred flies out of the box, finally freed after all these years. He agrees to help her become happy again, which she believes will only happen when she wins back Charles. However, his childish antics do more harm than good. He sinks Janie’s boat, causes havoc at a restaurant, and even makes Lizzie attack a person playing a violin in a shopping mall.
Worried by Elizabeth’s recent strange behavior, Polly brings her to a (children’s) psychologist. In the waiting room, Fred is seen meeting up with other patients’ (who are all children) imaginary friends. The doctor prescribes medication to rid her of him, whom he and Polly believe is a figment of her imagination. She also changes her appearance and wardrobe. Charles now wants her back and she is overjoyed, until Fred discovers he is still cheating on her with Annabella.
Heartbroken, she tells Fred that she can’t leave Charles, because she is scared of being alone. They escape to a dream sequence in which she is finally able to reject him, stand up to Polly, and declare she is no longer afraid of her. She frees her imprisoned childhood self. Fred tells her that she doesn’t need him anymore, so they kiss and he disappears into her eternal subconscious.
Drop Dead Fred is a 1991 British/American dark fantasy black comedy film directed by Ate De Jong, produced by PolyGram Filmed Entertainment and Working Title Films and released and distributed by New Line Cinema. The film was promoted as a lighthearted children’s film but there are notable adult themes and gags and some elements of black comedy, emotional abuse, mental illness, bizarre visual and make-up effects and profanity.
Drop Dead Fred (1991)
Directed by: Ate De Jong
Starring: Phoebe Cates, Rik Mayall, Marsha Mason, Tim Matheson, Carrie Fisher, Keith Charles, Ashley Peldon, Daniel Gerroll, Eleanor Mondale, Sjoukje De Jong Douma
Screenplay by: Carlos Davis, Anthony Fingleton
Production Design by: Joseph T. Garrity
Cinematography by: Peter Deming
Film Editing by: Marshall Harvey
Costume Design by: Carol Wood
Set Decoration by: Colin Tugwood, Sydney Sharpe
Art Direction by: Rando Schmook
Music by: Randy Edelman
Distributed by: New Line Cinema
Release Date: April 19, 1991
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