Dice Rules Reviews

Idiotically welding Andrew Dice Clay concert footage onto an over-extended prologue that purports to examine Dice's early, non-cool, salad days, DICE RULES offers the worst of two worlds, the concert format and the traditional slob comedy. In the "A Day in the Life" prologue, narrated by the Dice Man, we are witness to his original persona of a nerdish mama's boy whipped into submission by a termagant of a wife, Berneece (Maria Parkinson). Among the picaresque adventures this nitwit endures are a trip to the bank where he pleads for a free toaster and is verbally assaulted by a teller, an encounter with a jealous pal who purloins the toaster and subjects him to a tongue-lashing, and an almost surreal meeting with a black gas-station attendant (Eddie Griffin) who wrecks the Dice-ster's auto and mercilessly insults him. Only after the beleaguered Dice Clay is coached by a glib leather-clothing huckster, Bob Toddler (also played by Clay), can he pull himself up by the gonads and become a real man. Having failed to convince us that the chunky, misogynist macho man we know as the Dice Man could ever have sprung from such milquetoast origins, this hodge-podge dives directly into the concert footage of present-day Clay. Now comes the rodomontade Clay's audience loves to salivate over: ethnic put-downs, scathing references to female genitalia, obscene nursery rhymes, a few songs and impressions, and more droll allusions to female genitalia. As deplorable as Clay's material is, at least the concert footage is professionally shot and assembled; it never sinks to the amateurishness of the prologue framing device which suggested that the blubbery sex machine was once a lily-livered twit. What's most frightening about DICE RULES isn't the sub-human humor or the cutaway shots of the delighted faces of Clay's following of male cretins and idiotic college boys. What is truly scary about the Dice Clay experience is the selection of shots of women at Madison Square Garden, young women who laugh at and salivate over this sexist oaf. A dexterous practitioner of the put-down, Clay is a sneer artist--only a masochist could delight in his jeer-and-leer routines. It's quite apparent that a Clay performance is just that: a calculated show that gives the audience exactly what it wants, a confirmation of its prejudices and a chance to vent sexual frustrations. Clay might be less disgusting if it weren't so obvious that everything is a pose; the obscenities and leather jacket are just two elements of his carefully packaged shtick. What Clay offers a waiting world is a feeling of empowerment for people who face survival jobs, a declining economy, and the nightmare of AIDS. As he demonstrated in the film CASUAL SEX?, Dice Clay is not without talent as an actor. In his defense, let it be said, he sings rather well and that he does some clever impressions of Eric Roberts, Travolta and Stallone. But his versatility evaporates when he tries to build characters onstage; the voice he uses for the nerd character in the prologue and the voice he uses to spitefully mimic women are interchangeable. To be a Dice Man is to be a narcissistic, self-satisfied man's man who won't take crap from anyone, especially successful immigrants, and who only needs women for a quick one. Compassion, tolerance and courtesy are banned from Dice-land. The only question this repellent film raises is why anyone would fancy such a hope-depleted, reprehensible brand of comedy. Dice is selling hatred. And if the smiling faces registered on camera here are any evidence, there are an awful lot of people out there eager to buy his wares. (Excessive profanity, adult situations.)