Watch The Adventures of Ford Fairlane For Free

Good concept, poorly executed.

Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

I remember years ago, when I was a pimply faced teenager, that my peers absolutely loved this movie, and a part of me went along with them. I had seen it advertised on the back of a comic book and since it was named after a car, and I wasn't all that interested in cars, I expected that this film was going to be boring and thought no more of it. However, of late it had been sitting at the back of my mind, and I managed to track it down and watch it again, if only for old times sake. Well, in short, it is really, really bad. Basically it is just one long Andrew Dice Clay comedy sketch. I can sort of understand why my peers may have liked the movie, particularly with the number of scantily clad women, and Fairlane's numerous sex jokes (including giving it a name), but sometimes we simply grow out of that phase of life. The other thing was that the acting was pretty atrocious, and really seemed to be stilted at times. Anyway, the film begins with the lead singer of a heavy metal band (which sounds a lot like Van Halen) dies on stage of an alleged drug overdose, while Ford, who happens to be a 'Rock and Roll Detective', in that his clients, and cases, all involve the music industry, is finishing off another case involving a stalker. Anyway, he is approached by an old friend to find a woman that he claims to be his daughter (but in reality is just a groupy), and proceeds to meet an untimely end. This film has all the typical tropes that you would expect from such a film, including the detective who is jealous because he is stuck with his dead-end job while Ford gets into all the cool clubs. However, the jokes end up wearing pretty thin after a while, and the ending has everything wound up quite conveniently, including bringing Ford and the girl that does like him together. Oh, and there is this kid that keeps on popping up, and it is only at the end that you find out why he seems to be always hanging around. As I mentioned, I'd never heard of Andrew Dice Clay before this film, and really didn't think much about him afterwards. It was only after digging up this film from the dusty archives that I realised that they were making a really big deal about the guy. It turned out that he happens to be a stand-up comedian, but since I'd never seen any of his acts, or heard any of his jokes, the name really went over my head. In fact I've noticed that he hasn't seemed to have made all that many other films either. I guess that really says everything about this film, and that it is basically just some crude excuse for a bunch of buys to giggle at jokes that aren't all that funny.

"The Adventures of Ford Fairlane" was supposed to be raunchy stand-up comic Andrew Dice Clay's launch pad into movie stardom, but unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your feelings about "Dice") by the time it was released his fifteen minutes of fame was about up, and the film crashed and burned. I will admit that I have never been a big "Dice-Man" fan, I've only ever been able to tolerate his stand-up routines in small doses, but oddly enough, I have always enjoyed this movie. It's big, loud, dumb, profane, and morally reprehensible -- so hey, what's not to like? Clay basically plays himself as the foul mouthed title character (leather jacket, cowboy boots, cigarettes and all), a Los Angeles based private detective who specializes in cases involving the music industry. As the movie opens a rock star by the name of "Johnny Black" (played by Vince Neil of Motley Crue) mysteriously dies onstage. In what he thinks is an unrelated case, Fairlane is hired by a local shock rock DJ (played by Gilbert Gottfried, channeling Howard Stern here) to locate a missing groupie named "Zuzu Petals," who as it turns out, knows more about the death of the rock singer than even she realizes. With his bubble-brained charge in tow, Fairlane spends the rest of the movie avoiding gunshots, explosions and a maniacal Australian hit man (played by Robert "Freddy Krueger" Englund of all people, with a horrible Aussie accent) before he stumbles upon a conspiracy that goes all the way to the top of the music industry. "The Adventures of Ford Fairlane" may not be a great movie, but it is a fun one. Some of Dice's one-liners are endlessly quotable ("Talking to Zuzu was like masturbating with a cheese grater - mildly entertaining but mostly painful." "So many a-holes, so few bullets!" "You're about ten seconds away from the most embarrassing moment of your life!"), and director Renny Harlin keeps the pace light and moving fast enough that you don't' have time to stop and think how ridiculous the whole thing is. Dice may not be much of an actor, but he gets fine support from Wayne Newton (!), Priscilla Presley, Lauren Holly, Ed O'Neill Jr., and a host of other background characters. "Ford Fairlane" could become a cult classic if only enough people give it a chance. Even if you're not a fan of the "Dice-Man," this flick is a fast, funny way to kill 90 minutes. Do it for the Koala Bear.

I despise political correctness so much that even though I would normally give this movie a 6, it is a 10. What did Dice do that was so offensive? He told the truth, and maybe did it with a little bit of vulgarity. Big deal. Lenny Bruce did it, and people love him for it. But by the early 90s, a bunch of frauds took over this country and started telling people how to think and act. Diceman stood in their way. Ford Fairlane shows the way things really are - a man has to be tough and have a front to face all the ridiculous things in life. Dice did this with honesty. He showed a regular guy, who didn't sellout to phony Hollywood and knew exactly how to make fun of the music industry at the time. Hollywood is trying to put up a girlish sounding kid, an obvious satire of Michael Bolton, and abandoning the true fire that was rock and roll. This movie had a connection to about the only good thing about this arrogant and cold era called the 90s. There was Priscilla Presley, the wife of the man who saved America from the doldrums during the 50s, and the heroine in Naked Gun. There is Ed O'Neill, who played Al Bundy, the most real character on television during the 90s. Let's face it, Married With Children was the one show of the 90s that dared showed regular people who couldn't always afford to stock their refrigerator. This movie is filled with a lot of satire and good humor. The main reason why people hate Andrew Dice Clay is they don't get what he is really about. They think he is just offensive, male chauvinistic, and all this other nonsense. But what they don't understand is that Dice was showing that a man has put on a big act in order to get anything done in life. The people who are politically correct are shallow, and they want everything handed to them in life. They can't deal with pain and with things that aren't always so pretty. So, if you think this movie is offensive, try real life. Go to Kenya, Sudan, or so many other places around the world, and see if this movie is disturbing compared to the reality for most people in the world. You might even start to see the point of a movie like this, and laugh about it.

The first starring vehicle for raunchy, misogynistic comedian Andrew Dice Clay, a much-ballyhooed crime-comedy about a rock-'n-roll detective in Hollywood, based upon a character created by Rex Weiner. It's a predictably tasteless, live-wire human cartoon which does everything it can to tickle its target audience (leering males 25 and under). Dice is a drawling, thickly-accented rube of the Sylvester Stallone school, modern as all get-out in language but with a throwback personality (what he's doing in southern California is a mystery, he seems like he'd be much happier solving cases in a New York borough). After a popular heavy metal singer is murdered, Dice's Ford Fairlane combs the scuzzy music-biz to find the culprits, aided by teen wiseacre Maddie Corman, assistant Lauren Holly (who knows karate!) and a cute Qualla Bear. This material (comic machismo peppered with F-you's) is strictly on a junior-high level, but the supporting cast is professional and there's a pretty funny chase around the outside of the Capitol Records building. *1/2 from ****