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-oriented cinematic progeny of Marlon Brando’s The Wild One, Ice plays 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 doesn’t understand. It’s a full-on ‘90s neon invasion into backwoods Americana, disowned by the director, nearly abandoned by the studio and lensed by future Oscar-winner Janusz Kamiński. But it’s also a raging good time and a reminder of what it is to be young. And did we mention the killer soundtrack featuring “4 new songs” by the man himself?
