Monday, June 29, 2015

COOL AS ICE (1991)

From the cinematographer of SCHINDLER'S LIST and SAVING PRIVATE RYAN comes the preposterous story of a young rapper, Johnny Van Owen (Vanilla Ice), who's riding with his crew through a small town when suddenly his homeboi's bike starts trippin'.  Forced to stay in this two-bit town until the whip is fixed, Mr. Vanilla fills his time by flirting with the only attractive girl in town, Kathy...whom Vanilla calls "Kat" because he is clever.  Added to this already exciting drama (bike getting repaired, Vanilla courting Kat) is the nail-biting news that Kat's father (Michael Gross) is actually in the Witness Protection Program and now the people he's hiding from have found him!  Will lil' 'nilla be able to save the day and still have time to jump his motorcycle over a fence, dance randomly, randomly rap, drive his motorcycle through the wall of a house, ride a horse backwards, wear sunglasses at night and go across the street to, uh, schling a schlong?  Probably.

Based on the film's (current 6/2015) IMDb score of 2.8/10 and all of the snide comments you see online about this film, you would think that it's an incompetent turd of a movie, but it's actually entertaining.  The story is straight forward, the photography by longtime Spielberg collaborator Janusz KamiƄski is impressive, the music numbers are worked seamless into the story and not forced, the supporting characters are all memorable, interesting set designs and the acting by the whole cast (yes, even Mr. Ice) are all perfectly fine.  Honestly, I enjoyed Ice's playful manner and goofy lines like "...I'm just cooling." and "Then let's g-o."

Recommended for people who don't take life 2 seriously and/or fans of cheesy 90's cinema.  If I had the financial means, I would gladly finance COOL AS ICE 2: STILL SCHLIN' DAT SCHLONG with absolutely no regard to if it made money or not.  I'm also curious as to why the song "Ice Ice Baby" was not used?