Cool As Ice is like one long music video with no plot. Well, there's a sort-of plot. Boy meets girl who already has a boyfriend, but the boyfriend is a complete dick. You know how that's going to end. Johnny (Vanilla Ice) meets girlfriend-to-be Kathy (Kristin Minter, right, with Ice) by racing his motorbike alongside her riding her horse on the other side of a fence, then somehow manages to jump the bike over the fence - despite having no ramp or incline to hand, land in front of her and grind his bike into the dirt, surprising the horse which then throws her off. When she gets up she hits him, they trade insults and he mugs to himself, "Yeah, she likes me!". Johnny and his friends, Jazz (Deezer D), Sir D (Kevin Hicks) and Princess (Allison Dean), then block the road with their bikes so they can admire them, thus annoying everyone who's driving behind them and trying to get on with their day. And so it goes on, until one of them has a problem with their bike and tries to get it fixed by local oddball Roscoe (Sydney Lassick), and because it seems to take him forever, they end up staying with him and his wife, Mae (Dody Goodman) for several days. Cool As Ice is a film for which I had low expectations, but which I ended up really enjoying. It's all unintentionally funny, but in a way it's clearly intentional as there's just no way any part of this film can be taken seriously, even down to a cute sight gag where there's apparently salt and pepper pots right up close to the camera with Princess further back, sat at a table. But then she reaches for the salt pot, it's massive! At another point, it made me laugh out loud when Mr Ice just knocked on Kathy's front door with a single thud! While staying with the weird couple, Johnny soon spots that Kathy lives nearby. However, she's got a boyfriend called Nick (John Newton), who, when Johnny introduces himself, is surprised that they both know each other. Not to worry - she's a bit of a moose anyway and this is a town of nerds, so there's slim pickings for her. The plot doesn't get much more taxing than that, other than with a brief sub-plot where Kathy's father, Gordon (played by Family Ties' Michael Gross) is being hassled by extortionists for such a ridiculous reason that they make the burglars in Home Alone look like professionals. Given that we know early on how much Gordon hates Johnny, just who do you think will save the day? Yes, it's a toughie.

Overall, Cool As Ice is mental in so many ways for the first 30-40 mins before it settles down to a fairly bog-standard story. It's not hard to see how it was shunned critically and in general, and Vanilla Ice was really just a near-one-hit wonder with Ice Ice Baby, which, bizarrely, wasn't even included in this film. However, looking at it with fresh eyes, you've got a silly piece of escapist entertainment running for around 80 minutes before the end credits kick in. Vanilla Ice, himself, probably could've had a bigger career had he started around four or five years earlier when hip-hop and funk music was starting to dominate the charts with tunes like Steve Silk Hurley's Jack Your Body, and later, Rebel MC's Street Tuff. As such, that clearly didn't help when it came to his swift demise, less than a year after he started in November 1990, his other singles being Play That Funky Music (No.10, Feb 1991), Rollin in My 5.0 (No.27, June 1991) and Satisfaction (No.22, Aug 1991). The DVD box also makes a big thing about how the cast includes Naomi "dirty diamonds" Campbell, but she only appears miming to the opening theme and title track; and the man in charge of this production, David Kellogg, has spent the majority of his career so far also directing plenty of Playboy Playmate Video Calendars over the years - which might predict the include of blonde hottie Bobbie Brown as Monique, who gives Ice her phone number early on (which includes the digits '555', so he clearly won't be getting any from her), taking time out in 1999 to do the rather average live action Inspector Gadget with Matthew Broderick. Presented in the original 1.85:1 anamorphic theatrical ratio, the picture is fairly sharp and detailed, and also very colourful throughout, bringing out the loud clothes worn by Vanilla Ice and those he hangs out with. For the record, I'm watching on a Panasonic 37" Plasma screen via a Samsung BD-P1500 Blu-ray player. Audio-wise, you get a mere Dolby Surround soundtrack. It's a shame there's no Dolby Digital 5.1 for this movie, but it does a great job of bringing across the thumping music from the soundtrack, with some great use of bass hitting the subwoofer. There are zero extras on this disc. The menu shows a static image of the cover art with the theme from the film on a loop and some dancing clips merged into the background. There are no subtitles, which is inexcusable, and 16 chapters which isn't quite enough. I work on the rule of thumb for approximately one every five minutes, ensuring one apiece for the opening and closing credits.

FILM CONTENT PICTURE QUALITY SOUND QUALITY EXTRAS	Zero
OVERALL

Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 2010.