MOVIE REVIEW : The Diceman Is Funny and Offensive in Concert Film

Anyone disturbed by Andrew Dice Clay’s humor may get doubly unsettled at the audience reaction in his sometimes offensive, sometimes funny new concert movie “Dice Rules” (selected theaters).

Clay, decked out in Brooklyn-Italian tough-guy street leather--amplified by rows of studs that spell out “Dice Rules”--prowls the stage, lighting cigarette after cigarette, mimicking a sexist, racist oaf and pouring out a torrent of prohibited Anglo-Saxon 4-and 10-letter words. As he does, the Madison Square Garden crowd roars, obviously turned on.

They treat his scatology-laced salvoes--a litany of obscene Mother Goose nursery rhymes, street gutter talk and abuse directed against such often-sacrosanct targets as women, racial minorities and people with physical or speech handicaps--with astonished bursts of laughter, shaking their fists in the air and howling with glee, chanting out their favorite lines, obviously having a great time.

“Dice Rules,” directed by Jay Dubin and written mostly by Clay, won’t win Clay many new friends. It contains exactly the sort of deliberately insensitive material to which his detractors object the most. But it also demonstrates, as last year’s miserable “The Adventures of Ford Fairlane” didn’t, how and why his comedy works.

Obscene language, which, by itself, got the movie an NC-17 rating, is the core of Clay’s act. He’s a dirty-mouth comedian in the old Redd Foxx mold and he seems to acts as a pressure valve for his audience. Playing a working-class street hood, consumed with braggadocio and prone to graphic tales of his (possibly imaginary) sexual conquests, Clay lets his audience act out secret, violent or nasty impulses. His character--in true working-class fashion--disrupts the fabric of polite society, renders propriety meaningless.

Where “Ford Fairlane” missed Clay’s energy level, “Dice Rules” unleashes it, showing him to be an accomplished performer. It also shows what both limits him and makes him an object of probably overstated controversy.

Is the audience laughing at “Dice”--at his parodies of crude machismo--or are they laughing with him, ridiculing his many targets? Or are they simply astonished at the ceaseless flow of his profanity?

A bit of all three, perhaps. Clay’s character, which he plays as an obvious blowhard, probably is a hero to some of the audience, but they’re not really getting the joke. Dice’s machismo is, in some sense, built on sand. This movie begins with a prologue which presents his genesis: as a Jerry Lewis-style whining and put-upon nerd--shrewish wives and wildly gesticulating black gas station attendants are among his nemeses--who, once upon a time, bought a black leather jacket from a slick clothing salesman and immediately turned into the Diceman.

Lewis, an ultimate self-deprecating clown, is an obvious influence; Clay often gives the Lewis voice to his invariably unsatisfied female sexual partners. And there’s a lot of Rodney Dangerfield too. It may seem a long way from Dangerfield’s signature “I tell ya, I can’t get no respect” to Dice’s “I tell ya, I got no tolerance,” but perhaps they’re psychically linked: a couple of frustrated, sweating, paranoid city types, with different defense systems.

That may be what limits Dice as a character and makes him so many enemies. Clay doesn’t let enough fear through to counterbalance or explain the loathing. If that nerd were more obviously visible beneath the Diceman’s posturing, maybe his passionate detractors would feel less angry, less threatened, more amused.

‘Dice Rules’

A Seven Arts release of a Fleebin Dabble production. Director Jay Dubin. Producer Fred Silverstein. Executive producers J. R. Guterman, Jana Sue Memel. Concert material by Andrew Dice Clay. “Day in the Life” screenplay Lenny Shulman, Clay. Cinematographer Michael Negrin, Charlie Lieberman. Editor Mitchell Sinoway. Production design Jane Musky. With Andrew Dice Clay. Running time: 1 hour, 27 minutes.

MPAA-rated NC-17 (Language).