The Adventures of Ford Fairlane was a must-watch movie when I was a teenager. The Andrew Dice Clay vehicle (pun intended, whoa!) was released at exactly the right time in my life for me to be an instant fan. I wasn’t old enough to drive, but I was old enough to laugh at dirty jokes, and it didn’t get any dirtier than the Diceman in the late ’80s and early ‘90s.
It’s probably been 30 years since I watched the box office stinker, but I still occasionally find myself quoting some of the more ridiculous lines that I remember. I decided I should check it out again, because there’s no way it’s as good as I remember. Well… if I’m honest, it’s not as bad as I expected it to be.
No, It’s Not Citizen Kane, But It’s Not Trying To Be
The Adventures of Ford Fairlane is not high-brow cinema, but that’s hardly an earth-shattering comment. However, it isn’t that bad. Yes, it’s incredibly objectionable, even by the standards of 1990, when it was released, it was offensive. Judging by modern standards, well, let’s just say that I’m not surprised it’s not available to stream anywhere except on demand with my Prime subscription. As a movie, though, the whole point was to be offensive, so it should be judged as such.
The plot is simple, of course, as it was really just a way to get Andrew Dice Clay into a movie and let him run wild with his raunchy humor. It’s easy to forget just how huge Dice was in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. He famously became the first stand-up comedian to sell out Madison Square Garden for two consecutive nights, and he was everywhere in 1990. As young teenagers, my friends and I thought he was about the funniest person on earth, and we weren’t alone. That he stressed out our parents with his crude humor only made him a bigger hero.
Again, none of that is all that unpredictable.
In A Lot Of Ways, It Weirdly Works
There are some things that really do work about the movie. For starters, it is a perfect “character’ for Dice. A “rock and roll detective” is a silly idea, but you really just need a character who wears a leather jacket and smokes a ton of cigarettes. So, on that front, the producers, writers, and director Renny Harlin got it exactly right. Speaking of director Renny Harlin, he was also the perfect director for a movie that was so perfectly timed for 1990.
The Adventures of Ford Fairlane oozes 1980s/90s style and panache, and that’s something Harlin was great at, even if he had went on to direct one of the most notorious box office bombs of all time with Cutthroat Island. This flick is brash, colorful, and with just the right amount of ridiculousness to work. It also had an equally bonkers cast that included musicians, Al Bundy, and Freddy Kreuger.
- Pricilla Presley
- Wayne Newton
- Vince Neil
- Robert Englund
- Morris Day
- Tone Loc
- Ed O’Neill
PLUS, it boasted a huge hit song with Billy Idol’s “Rock The Cradle.” It was kind of a perfect storm. But like, using the word perfect way more liberally than “storm.”
I fully understand why it bombed, and why most critics hated it then (and now), but you have to see the forest through the trees, or at least the Hollywood Hills through the Marlboro smoke. It really is a product of its time, and for that, it should at least be recognized, if not celebrated. Maybe one day we’ll get the Andrew Dice Clay biopic we all deserve.