Cool as Ice

For those too young to remember, Vanilla Ice was a malignant tumor growing on the popular music scene ten years ago. Along with MC Hammer and Marky Mark he pilfered and diluted black music to make it commercially acceptable to middle-class white children. His flash-in-the-pan `attitude' eventually fizzled away - but not before becoming the blueprint for every idiot bad-boy pop star on top of the charts today.

Cut to ten years later, and the threat of an Ice comeback is unlikely. It's the perfect time to watch COOL AS ICE. The film bombed on release, and signaled the end was nigh for Vanilla Ice. Watching it today, the star reduced to a relic of inane pop history, the film becomes a candidate for the best worst film of all time.

Rebels and their motorcycles have a history on screen. They define the times. Marlon Brando was the quintessential bad boy when he rode into town as THE WILD ONE. Fast-forward fifteen years and history repeats: Fonda and Hopper rewrite the Hollywood rulebook in EASY RIDER.

In COOL AS ICE, the bad boy of rap rides into the suburbs with his all-black posse, ready to reap havoc on suburbia, right? Wrong. Ice's crew only reappear when director David Kellogg requires a cut-away shot. Even then, rather than scaring the local children, they're making peanut-butter sandwiches and watching TV. They sit around, waiting for Vanilla to get the girl.

The romantic sub-plot is a peach. She's the highest achieving student in town, but will she risk her future for Vanilla Ice? He's a self-educated poet of the street, although his actual words of wisdom somehow escape me at the moment. The sub-sub plot involves her father, who we are led to believe was the most honest cop on a corrupt force. Despite seemingly being transplanted back into the same community, he doesn't mind going on television so the bad guys can find him.

There's a few other sub-sub-sub plots of minimal concern, but no real story. It's a star vehicle resting on the shoulders of a ludicrously vain idiot. Fortunately, his fifteen minutes of fame and torture translates to a typically foolish ninety minutes. The most vain ego exercise in Hollywood history? Perhaps. All in vain? Definitely.

The film was pretty bad, but that is to be expected. That being said, they did have some plot in there that made this thing more than just one long music video. Granted, for the most part the film is told in montage form, literally at one point you had one and only a couple of minutes later there would be another! Then a smattering of dialog to make things go forward, yo yo check it!

The story, a white rapper who rides on crotch rockets is driving the country side with his posse and immediately falls in love with a girl on a horse that he tries to kill by doing a stunt that is going to scare the horse she is riding. She is angry, but you know she is going to love him by the end of the film. Then, inexplicably, one of the motorcycles goes out of commission and they end up at a house of an older couple that literally lets the whole group stay with them as they fix the motorcycle... Then, inexplicably, the girl he likes is on the news for getting good grades... This makes two guys interested as her father was a cop put in the witness protection program! Someone might have told the dad that allowing yourself to be interviewed on the news was not something he should do, but at the same time who thought a puff piece, general interest story would be shown nationwide... So our hero courts the girl, rides his bike and has to save the day; though, pretty sure he would get his butt handed to him considering he has no muscles and would later get owned by Todd Bridges in celebrity boxing...

The film is kind of annoying, as it is just Vanilla drooling over himself thinking he is some sort of bad dude. No man, you're an idiot wearing horrible clothing combinations which would be in and out super quick to make room for the grunge movement. His acting sucks, but so does everyone except Michael Gross who is acting way too seriously for this thing.

So if you want to watch a movie about a white rapper that has no drama and is totally chaotic and about 90 percent montages, your ship has come in! I only watched this because it was on sale at Rifftrax and it was funny hearing the guys make fun of this film. I for the life of me cannot figure out why they make a film featuring Vanilla Ice and seem to not have any of the hit songs, I know they probably wanted to do all new stuff for the soundtrack, but come on man, no Ice Ice Baby?

"Cool As Ice" is the work of art.

No, really. That's what the rap star wanna-be Vanilla Ice thinks when he starred in this movie cluttered with the piece of dog dung script from David Stenn. The movie showcases the atrocious acting by Vanilla Ice who bolsters his ego to triumph over evil and injustice, and gets to shag the girl of his dreams ("perverted fantasies" more like describes his intention of establishing a torrid love affair). It's so unbelievably bad you have to suspend the disbelief just to get the kick out of making fun of Vanilla Ice as he attempts to act like he's going to win an Oscar for Best Actor but ends up being an amateur, only riddled with the terrible one-liners and smirk expressions so annoying you want to punch him in his face.

The plot is nondescript. It's too absurd and rather bizarre to summarize, so I won't bother. The star Vanilla Ice leading a bunch of poseurs to run the errand and falling madly in love with a pretty girl and conquering evil is the plot I can think of. I must make a note of complaint that "Cool As Ice" is grossly misrated PG because there's the gratuitous use of the word "D***", some violence, the particularly scary sequence and excessive sensuality. There are the scenes that literally had me die laughing. So funny you'll ache your ribs and feel the pain as Vanilla Ice intends it to become embarrassingly painful when he saw the finished version for the first time and have hid in oblivion since.

Some particularly funny scenes (some may be spoilers):

After the opening MTV-style music sequence, it becomes obvious that Vanilla Ice could not act when a sexy girl comes on to him

Jumping over the fence with the motorcycle and inadvertently hurts the girl

Vanilla Ice stole the "black book" with the list of female friends and looks like a pimp when he boasts to his poseur friends

Vanilla Ice walks around wearing an overinflated orange puff coat with the bare chest and funky pants, shouting "Hey, yo! What's up?" in a grating accent in the first half hour, made to look like the gangbanging pusher

As the girl is about to enter into her house, Vanilla Ice grabs her elbow and said "All right. I get it. Check this through. If you need me, I'll be right over there" in front of her dim-bulbed frat boyfriend.

A poorly choreographed fight scene between Vanilla Ice and the bunch of jocks

Vanilla Ice is a potential sociopathic rapist when he enters and lies on the bed besides the sleeping girl without her consent/knowledge

The overindulgent erotic interaction scenes between Vanilla Ice and the girl, and that includes pseudo dry humping and groping. If they actually go all the way, Vanilla Ice would be guilty of statutory rape

The irony of Vanilla Ice wearing a black puff leather jacket plastered all over with the words like "Sex Me Up," "Oh Yeah," and "Lust"

Gratuitous slow motion scenes and gratuitous sexual innuendoes

Michael Gross' one-dimensional character as the girl's strict father and the attitude of Vanilla Ice when he had to leave at the insistence of her father

Older couple dancing to the funky music. Utterly preposterous

Vanilla Ice's most unintentionally funny scene -- "You know something? You don't know. You don't know me. You don't know me at all!" with a cocky attitude in a sarcastic tone and then rides away with a motorcycle

Vanilla Ice invades the girl's property and got sprayed wet by the water sprinkler. In the next scene, he jumps the fence with the completely dry clothes.

Vanilla Ice rides the motorcycle at over 100 MPH. So dangerous he should have died in a tragic accident

Vanilla Ice's line of "It's fresh, man" in response to a stupid kid brother's ridiculous hair

Vanilla Ice's line "I know that sound" when investigating the mystery sound on the loudspeaker

The audiotape about the kidnapping scheme is single-handedly the funniest scene in the whole movie -- you have to see and hear to believe it

The floating physics of Vanilla Ice's motorcycle gang crashing through the wall on the second floor at the construction building. Truly a laugh riot!

The violence at the construction site could be mistaken for the gang hazing ritual

Vanilla Ice wears a ridiculous black wool hat and said the line, "Imagine that." If you have the eagle eyes, it's obvious the stunt was pulled off with a steel ramp mounted over the car to be followed by the torturous closing music sequence.

All in all, the most unintentionally funniest movie I've seen -- and I've never laughed frequently and harder AT a movie before with the exception of "Project A-Ko" and "There's Something About Mary". No doubt this is a huge embarrassment that led to Vanilla Ice's demise as the hip-hop pop star and a movie actor. Highly ironic that Vanilla Ice said at the end, "I'm...outta here!"

How David Kellogg got hired by Disney to direct "Inspector Gadget" after this inane tripe that serves as Vanilla Ice' vanity is beyond my comprehension.

This has to be to be the most unintentionally hilarious "movie" ever made! Its like the worst Saved By The Bell episode only...worse! You have to wonder what was going on through Vanilla Ice's head during rehearsals and sitting through the premeire...

I've read a few of the reviews about this film and most of them are pretty spot on. As a film it truly deserves to be rooted in the worst 100 list, terribly acting by the two *bad* cops, worse still by straight laced Michael Gross - and the less said about Vanilla's acting ability the better.

Worse than the acting is the absolutely hilarious Cameo by Naomi Campbell in the opening credits, who screams her way through a really really hideous song whilst dancing badly and constantly trying to brush her hair away from her face.

After this initial horrific all singing all dancing intro, some bint gives Vanilla her phone number just so that we're reminded how great Vanilla ice is, and then the film starts proper. At this point you're just recovering from the awfulness of the dark warehouse intro, and suddenly you're assaulted by the wildy vivid colours of... pretty much everything actually, it's a constant throughout the film that everything is just too vivid, its hard to explain, but once you've noticed it, its actually quite amusing.

This is pretty much how the film goes, just as you think you've seen the most awful scene in cinematic history, along comes another, worse one that manages to make the last one look average. A great example of this is the way that in the first couple of minutes, Vanilla 'bunny hops' his 250kg GSXR-1100 over a 5 foot high fence. An absolute classic moment in cinema which stays with you... kind of like syphillis.

But it's for all these reasons (and hundreds more) that you should watch this film. I ABSOLUTELY LOVE IT. I've never really been an advocate of the 'so bad it's good' school of thought, but I'll make an exception for this film. Not only have I seen it many times, but I bought it new from Amazon a little while ago so I can say I have an original copy. In years to come it will be completely priceless, such is the cult following of this shocking celluloid mistake.

I really would recommend that you see it, not because it's great, but just so you can appreciate how bad something can actually be, and how much of a complete freak of a movie this is.

I've never witnessed a scene in a movie which can compete with the pure hilarity of Vanilla dancing on his own, like a tw@t, outside the old people's house in his dayglo pants wearing his stupid jacket. I challenge anyone not to laugh outloud during this, and many other classic moments.

Deserves both 1 out of 10 as a film, and 10 out of 10 as a must see classic bomb.