Cool as Ice

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?

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.

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.

I hesitate to call this movie a really poor film, though don't get me wrong it is quite bad. But I believe it falls into a totally new genre of "crappy cult classics". When watching a film like Cool as Ice, I find myself asking over and over again, Are they serious? Who wrote this film? When they were writing the screenplay were they thinking: Yes, this is gold!

Now though this film is horrible, I find it very quotable which I believe is a major factor in assessing the quality of a film. Lines like "drop that zero and get with a hero" are unforgettable and hilarious. This movie is actually better then 75% of the comedies that are released in the movies today which sometimes even do well in the box office. Such movies come stocked with cliché's and overused jokes and though may be good for a few cheap laughs, are hardly worth seeing. Cool as Ice however is humorous (though not on purpose) and I think can be appreciated by anyone who was growing up during the early 90's. It really sums up what early 1990's were all about. I admit that it may be a little embarrassing if someone were to stumble across this title in your movie collection but if you ever see this movie for sale at a yard sale, I would recommend buying it for the full 1.00 price tag. It is worth watching with friends for some good laughs. My friends and I always mention this movie when discussing movie trivia and pop culture of the last decade. It always makes us smile. And isn't that what you hope for in a good movie?

OK, I admit it, I once was a huge Vanilla Ice fan. But then again, so were millions of other people. And incidentally, I just loved this movie. OK, so I was 11 years-old when I first watched it, so of course, my tastes in movies hadn't started developing back then. But even with a mediocre performance on the part of the Iceman and poor screen writing, I still find this movie enjoyable. Why? I don't know. Perhaps because it brings back fond memories. And I wouldn't quite put it on the same level of awfulness as Manos because no matter how bad this movie is, there is still something watchable in it. The problem is I still haven't figured out what it is.