Yup, Yup: A Taste of the Early 1990s, As Cinefamily Screens Vanilla Ice's "Cool As Ice"

For my final night as a thirtysomething, I was home mulling my elderly status when my pal Jeff Goldsmith gave a call. He was going to catch a Cinefamily screening of "Cool As Ice," Vanilla Ice's 1991 cinematic masterpiece. Would I come with?

Word to your mother.

The showing of "Cool As Ice" (which astoundingly doesn't include a performance of "Ice, Ice Baby") was part of the Cinefamily's "Heavy Midnites" series of late-night movies, described as "A carefully curated collection of pizza party classics, fist explosions, international adrenaline-pumpers, ‘80s funbombs, white-hot laugh factories, total freakazoids and more. But this is no MST3K chucklethon; this is a dedicated study of all that is, and can be, AWESOME."

Future screenings include Kid n' Play's "Class Act." But on Friday night, "Cool as Ice" attracted a packed house -- as well as Vanilla Ice's co-star, Kristin Minter (who was honest about the whole experience).

Does "Cool As Ice" hold up? Of course not. It didn't even hold up the moment it came out, and Minter says Vanilla Ice didn't help things by bringing a gun into Gelson's around the same time the movie came out. Ice got in trouble, and the studio wanted to downplay it. This was also the era when Vanilla Ice was dating Madonna -- and Minter says she used a lot of mouthwash before kissing the rapper, in case some STD was transmitted.

"Cool As Ice" has plenty of unintentionally funny moments, mostly when Ice is given another ridiculous line. But it's also fascinating in that "Cool As Ice" contains so many cira-1991 cliches that it looks like a parody of the era that might be filmed now.

From Cinefamily, here's a trailer:



And here's how Cinefamily expertly describes the film: "Drop that zero and get with the hero. In the annals of star-fueled vanity projects, few have more hypercolor intensity, badass B-Boy attitude or straight-up white-boy funk than Vanilla Ice’s feature film debut. A rap-centric cinematic progeny of Marlon Brando’s The Wild One, Cool As Ice features our man as Johnny Van Owen: a freewheeling, motorcycle-riding rebel-with-a-heart-of-gold who stops in a small town, falls in love and has to battle both jealous boyfriends and brutal kidnappers, all on his way to the next gig. But first he’s gonna have to deal with one mighty pissed-off dad (Family Ties’ Michael Gross), and a crew that just don’t understand. It’s a full-on neon ‘90s invasion into backwoods Americana, disowned by the director, nearly abandoned by its studio and lensed by future cinematography Hall of Famer Janusz Kamiński (who would go on to win an Oscar for Schindler’s List just two years later.) But it’s also a raging good time, and a reminder of what it is to be young. Did we also mention the killer soundtrack, featuring “4 new songs” by the man himself?"

Toddlers, Vanilla Ice and Johnny Depp at the MTV Movie Awards

Sunday night's MTV Movie Awards offered plenty of bizarre moments -- Mark Wahlberg stopping the show when someone in the audience yelled a derogatory remark at his co-presenter, Mila Kunis, for example -- and it's always awesome to see the Black Keys live, made surreal by Johnny Depp on guitar and both Steven Tyler and Joe Perry ducking out of the way to let them play.

But some of the real strange stuff was in the audience, which Maria and I were able to attend on Sunday night. There was the "Toddlers and Tiaras" child, dressed sadly in full make up and blue taffeta dress -- and her stage mom commanding her to perform for complete strangers. There was Vanilla Ice standing in the aisle, taking out his camera phone and snapping a self portrait in front of the stage. (I thought Vanilla was banned from MTV after this moment when he trashed a studio.)

Also: The audience sat for most of the night, not feeling the Wiz Khalifa, for example. Yet it gave a standing ovation to Christopher Nolan when he stepped on stage to promote "The Dark Knight Returns." This MTV Movie Awards audience must be *hard core* Batman fans.

Russell Brand didn't do much heavy lifting as host -- a few racy jokes at the start, but that was about the last we saw of him. I'd have to say the highlight was Johnny Depp's appearance with the Black Keys -- followed by Kristen Stewart trying, awkwardly, to be funny.

Some pics snapped at the event:



Russell Brand opens the show, works in multiple Michael Fassbender penis references.



fun. performs their springtime anthem "We Are Young" with Janelle Monae.



Wiz Khalifa with the advice of the night: "Work Hard. Play Hard." Wiz, you might just have a future as a copywriter for Nike.



Johnny Depp rocks with the Black Keys. Too bad he didn't do this in full "Dark Shadows" costume.



"The Dark Knight" stars on stage to premiere a new trailer for the film -- which looks awesome, and as a bonus, it looks like a scene was shot in downtown Los Angeles' Union Station!



"Spider-Man" stars hit the stage too, to lots and lots of laser beams.