Cool As Ice: A Picture Of Cultural Insanity

Pictured above: Coolest Guy Ever.

"Cool as Ice" is almost as awesome as you'd hope it would be. That is unless you've never heard of "Cool as Ice" and therefor never created such soaring expectations. In that case, "Cool as Ice" is the Vanilla Ice movie. Yeah, remember Vanilla Ice? Well they made a movie specifically for him and it's called "Cool as Ice". Surely you must see the profound possibilties in that.

And, normally they don't turn out quite like we'd hope. Remember "Snakes on a Plane"? Also, remember how it was funnier before it came out? And, surely, a film called "Hot Tub Time Machine" must be wonderfully stupid rather than just bad. "Cool as Ice", however, actually is what you'd expect a Vanilla Ice movie to be. For instance, it's opening credit sequence is a dance-party music video and it lasts, oh, 23 minutes.

Maybe not that long, but it certainly goes on much longer than feels normal, Ice rapping an entire song, plus six or seven verses. Then they leave the dance party, Ice and his friends, and...go motorcycle riding. Apparently they have no home, and simply roam the country side in search of dance parties to star in. They must; when one of their bikes breaks down, they are forced to stay with the zany old couple who are fixing it. Here Ice kills time by busting fresh dance moves in the drive way.

This comes after the introduction of the love interest, however. What happens is, Ice is cruising along and spots a girl riding a horse conveniently near a roadside fence. Like any reasonable person, he decides to jump the fence and frighten the horse into bucking the girl 40 feet across the lawn. Thus their magical journey into romance begins. In a grand stroke of luck, she happens to live across the street from the people fixing Ice's homeboy's bike, something Ice takes adantage of immediately by coming over to hit on her while her boyfriend looks on sort of disapprovingly.

"Hey Kat," he says, leaving her yard once more. "Word of advice. Time to ditch the zero, and get with the hero." Only human, Kat is enormously charmed by this.

Unfortunately, Kat's dad...like...owes money or something, and so two crime-oriented looking fellows enter-film as antagonists. They threaten that they must be paid by the next day at the current time, or else. Apparently everyone forgets this ever happened; the bad guys simply park outside of their house for pretty much the rest of the movie. I don't understand what purpose it serves, as they don't stop anyone from coming or going, and no one is un-aware of who they are, but they seem intent on the process. 

Anyway, the point is that Vanilla Ice is cool. Really. That's what the movie is "about". That is it's soul and greater purpose: Vanilla Ice is really, really, really cool. He's so cool that his hair probably grows into that elaborate style on its own. So cool he can make even girl's little brothers fall in love with him; Kat's sibling's first words at seeing Ice at his front door: "...Wow!..." It's like he's met all four Ninja Turtles and the Ghost Busters at once, in one person. I don't blame him. In 1991, if I had discovered Vanilla Ice on my front steps, I would have probably swallowed my own tongue. Lats face it, cool has gotten a lot quieter in recent years. Back in the day, if you were cool, people could tell from 16 blocks away.

And if you want to look at Cool as Ice as more than just a preposterous movie - if you want to understand it, I think it can be seen as a portrait of the cultural insanity that would ingender that kind of facination. This is the image that is "Vanilla Ice" put to the test, forced to endure as a narrative, and the cracks in concevability are just fantastic. The whole film may very well take place within the mind of the little brother character, who is at one point allowed to rid on the back of Ice's bike and lend a high flying bird toward Kat's jerk boyfriend, sitting at a stop sign with a nose bandage due to Ice's fresh karate skills. If anyone's dreams come true in "Cool as Ice" it's the little brother's. 

Exactly what I pictured falling in love as when I was 8.

All guys in my age group know the scene at the end of Turtles 2 where Vanilla Ice spontaneously comes up with the Ninja Rap, due, of course, to the sudden presence of four human-sized turtles (how else would one respond in such a situation?). I promise you this has nothing on "Cool as Ice". It is one of the most enjoyably stupid movies I've ever seen, partially because I was part of the culture it rides down in flames. When the film takes 7 minutes to play out Ice's retracted-from-the-world motorcycle montage, I am amazed as a film viewer, but oddly comfortable. To my inner child, it's a great scene. He and the little brother would have been great friends.

Fun fact: Janusz Kaminsky did the cinematography for "Cool as Ice", about two years before he shot "Schindler's List". I hold to it: the film is Art.


By Dave Beauchene