Andrew Dice Clay, Wayne Newton, Priscilla Presley, Morris Day, Lauren Holly, Gilbert Gottfried, Ed O'Neill, Sheila E.
& more! It sounds rather like a
Ronco commercial, and maybe it is just that cool... The kind of cool we here at Kitschy Kitschy Coo believe in anyway!
What am I talking about? Why the fab film,
The Adventures of Ford Fairlane, of course!
Just watched this flick on late night TV recently. I turned the tube on while this fine film was already in progress -- just as Fairlane (Dice Clay) is searching the boat residence of Johnny Crunch (Gottfried), a scene which includes a blow-up doll, a BDSM video tape with Crunch and Colleen Sutton (Presley), and a strange freak of a hit man (Robert Englund). (That alone could have sold me -- but wait! As I said, there's more!)
I turned to hubby and said, "What's this movie?" And he's all like, "It's Ford Fairlane, duh," like I'm some sort of pop culture retard. :snort: The film came out in 1990, and I was all up to my knees in baby poo, thank you very much. So I missed it then. But thanks to TV re-runs and
DVD, you too can enjoy the adventures of Ford "Mr. Rock n' Roll Detective" Fairlane.
There's so much to like about this movie. Sure, seeing Morris Day as a Record Producer is cool. And the cameos by 'countless others' (use of air quotes to indicate that you can really count them, I'm just too lazy to do so) makes this fun for those of us who are of a certain age (and like fine wine, we don't breathe -- our actual age anyway). But the film is funny!
Hubby stared at me like I was nuts, telling me folks made fun of it when it came out.
"What, didn't they know camp when they saw it?! Wait a minute, this was 1990, behaviorally, very 1980's, so they had to know camp film..."
"Um, I don't think it was made to be camp -- maybe not even made to be funny..." he retorts.
"Bah, it's the Vin-Man," I say, poo-pooing him now.
"The Vinman?"
"The. Vin. Man."
The look on his face tells me he has no idea that Dice Clay was in
Casual Sex, quite possibly one of my Fab-Fave-Films of All Time. (But that is another story, and likely for another place altogether too.)
So to get back to Ford Fairlane...
I adored the rest of the film, and kept an eye on for the next airing -- which I watched late at night, without hubby's snarky comments, thank-you-very-muchly.
Sure, the humor isn't politically correct -- I call that bonus points. Is it derogatory towards women? Err, how can you take a man who hides out a sorority where all the chicks are aerobicizing as anything other than a comment on stupid male fantasies?! If you're not sure that the movie is self-mocking, check out Andrew Dice Clay yelling, "My hair! My hair!" as he falls out a window.
Hey, the movie tag lines included, "Ford Fairlane, rock 'n roll detective. To clients he's the greatest. To everyone else, he's just a dick." And "Private Detective. Public Offender." Doesn't sound like it takes itself seriously to me.
It's a classic -- a cult classic (if not already, it will be) -- and on my gift list, should anyone who buys me gifts be reading here. I wouldn't throw
the soundtrack (with Dice Clay singing
I Ain't Got You) out of bed for eating crackers either, should a CD be able to do such things.
Oh, and in case anyone asks, my favorite line from the movie is, "Conversation with Zuzu Petals was like masturbating with a cheese grater: slightly amusing, but mostly painful."
Which is about how my husband feels about watching movies with me, I guess. *wink*
Labels: cool, cult classics, film reviews, movies
