Cool as Ice (1991)
Dir. David Kellogg
- Grossed $1.2 million on a $6 million budget. Opened in only 393 theaters! Tikes. D.O.A.
- Poor Michael Gross. This was a far, FAR fall from the heights of Family Ties. He would later redeem himself by starring in “Tremors,” but would further ruin any goodwill by starring in, like, twenty sequels to “Tremors.”
- How the Hell did Naomi Campbell end up in this? Answer: It’s her film acting debut! One of only 8 “supermodels” of her generation, she was the first black woman to grace the covers of Time and Vogue France and the first to open a Prada show. And here she was, making her debut in a fucking Vanilla Ice movie.
- Also, I despise Ice because the motherfucker was dating Madonna around the time she made her Sex book. Son of a bitch! Of course, he only lasted 8 months with her, but man… I would have wanted 8 minutes!
- The whole Suge Knight thing is fucking CRAZY. He basically threatened to throw Ice off a 15th-floor hotel balcony if Ice didn’t sign over the publishing rights to Ice Ice Baby to Knight. He did, and Knight founded Deathrow Records with the money! No Ice, Ice Baby? No Dre, Snoop or 2Pac.
- I needn’t explain how gross it is that this ass-clown became the fastest-selling rap artist of all time back in 1990. White people gonna white people every fucking time. If anyone ever has trouble defining inherent bias or the leg up white men have in the world, look no further than the meteoric rise of Vanilla Ice.
- Cool as Ice was nominated for 11 Golden Rasberry Awards in 6 categories, but won in only one: “Worst New Star” which Ice himself won against co-star Kristin Minter
- Minter played Kathy and then mostly became a TV actress with a good amount of steady work, including 70 episodes of ER! If you get a chance, see her stint on Ray Donovan – tis good if you like quality acting mixed with eye candy!
- Interestingly, Gwyneth Paltrow was offered the role but was told by her father to turn it down. Wise choice.
- Apparently director David Kellogg disowned the film!
- I cannot believe this, but the incredibly revered director of photography Janusz Kamiński – best known as Spielberg’s cinematographer of choice from Schinlder’s List all the way up to The Fabelmans. In fact, Cool as Ice was shot in April of 1991 and Schindler’s List, for which Kaminski would win the Oscar, started shooting in March of 1993. So in LESS THAN TWO YEARS, Kaminski went from DP’ing this piece of dogshit to working for Spielberg on what is arguably his most important film. THIS WILL NEVER CEASE TO BE THE MOST AMAZING FACT I’VE EVER UNEARTHED FOR THIS SHOW. Just pack it all up. Close down the neon. Stop the projectors and stop melting the butter for the popcorn. There will never be anything weirder than this.
Bottom Five Musicians on Film
Caveman (1981)
dir. Carl Gottlieb
Good god, this movie is fucking terrible. I first saw it as a kid on HBO—one of those early cable flicks that gained traction in my young, impressionable brain for no other reason than it was on constantly. But despite its repeated exposure, the one scene permanently burned into my memory involves a group of cavemen rooting around in a giant mud pit, only for another tribesman to wander over, point, and declare, “Poop,” before laughing at their expense. Fed up with his antics, they toss him into the poop face-first. That’s what watching Caveman is like.
That, in essence, is Caveman—a movie that, like its titular characters, is crude, dumb, and barely evolved.
But it earns its place on this list thanks to Ringo Starr—yes, that Ringo Starr—playing Atouk, a mild-mannered Neanderthal in love with Lana (Barbara Bach, Starr’s future wife) until he suddenly decides Shelly Long’s Tala is a better option, because… she’s nice? Oh yeah, Dennis Quaid in a VERY early role and football star-turned-actor John Matuszak (y’know, Sloth from “The Goonies”) turn up, as well as a curiously clueless Burgess Meredith.
Now, to be fair, this isn’t entirely Ringo’s fault. He’s bad, yes, but Caveman is a cinematic landfill of awful decisions from concept to execution. If anything, Starr is almost charming in his goofiness—he’s just stuck in a movie that treats “cavemen fall down” as its highest form of comedy.
But here’s the real crime: he said yes. He read this script, saw the poop jokes, the slapstick nonsense, and the caveman gibberish, and thought, Yes, this is my leading man moment. That’s enough to earn him the #5 spot on this list.
Fun Fact: This was one of the only feature-length films directed by Carl Gottlieb—best known as the co-writer of Jaws and its first two sequels. He also worked on Amazon Women on the Moon, where, unsurprisingly, his segments were some of the least funny.
Freejack (1992)
dir. Geoff Murphy
Freejack is one of those early-‘90s sci-fi “thrillers” that thought they were warning us about the dangers of computers and virtual reality. Instead, it ended up being a warning about casting Mick Jagger as a villain.
The premise: Time-traveling mercenaries steal people from the past seconds before they die, only to sell their bodies to rich people who want a new lease on life. It’s Total Recall meets Blade Runner—except dumb and featuring Mick Jagger as Victor Vacendak, a ruthless(?) bounty hunter who chases Estevez across a dystopian future.
And that’s where Freejack really falls apart—because Mick Jagger is not a villain. He’s Mick Jagger pretending to be a villain. There’s a difference. He delivers his lines like he’s doing an SNL sketch where the joke is “What if Mick Jagger was in an action movie?” His enormous lips move dramatically, his voice never quite hits the right pitch of menace, and the whole time, you can almost see him thinking, Am I doing this right? Spoiler: No, Mick. You are not.
Also, he’s chasing Emilio Estevez, which makes the whole thing even less convincing. One is an international rock legend, the other is the scrappy hero of The Mighty Ducks—and somehow, I’m supposed to buy this cat-and-mouse game?
Fun Fact: The director, Geoff Murphy, had actually worked with Estevez before (Young Guns II) and previously made Utu, an anti-colonialism film that scored well at Cannes. How did he go from Utu to Freejack? Hollywood, man. This is the kind of thing we’re used to seeing nowadays with Disney, think Cloe Zhao doing “The Eternals” or Barry Jenkins helming “Mufasa.” Wild that when it comes to artistic, prize-winning directors going full-Hollywood, history repeats itself, dooming everyone.
From Justin to Kelly (2003)
dir. Robert Iscove
Now, I already did a full review of this cinematic disaster last year—thanks, Mike—but here’s the recap: Kelly Clarkson did NOT want to make this movie. At all. In fact, when she won American Idol, she reportedly begged not to do it, but her contract forced her into it. And let me tell you: it shows.
She plays a small-town girl on Spring Break in Fort Lauderdale (because of course she does), where she meets and falls in love with Justin Guarini (who, to be fair, is slightly less terrible). The result is essentially a low-rent Grease meets Beach Blanket Bingo, except without charm, chemistry, or even the barest understanding of how human conversations work.
Clarkson delivers every line with the energy of someone who has already emotionally checked out. It’s like she’s actively trying to make the audience feel as awkward as she does. And while her singing is still good (because it’s Kelly Clarkson), its among the very few things keeping the movie from being completely unwatchable.
Mike, if you’re mad at me for not looking somewhere other than at a Filmjitsu movie, well, blame yourself. But seriously, if it’s really going to bother you that much, then I’ll just replace Clarkson with Madonna. Because she’s a trainwreck in just about every movie she’s acted in, with the exception of “Desperately Seeking Susan,” “A League of Their Own,” and “Dick Tracy.” That’s three decent performances out of about 20+ acting roles. Good God. But, you know, I’m such a homer for Madonna that I simply have to keep her off this list, so it’s Kelly Clarkson, who proved she’s a better singer – and talk show host – than an actress. Or, really, that she’s better at almost anything other than acting under contractual obligation.
Romeo Must Die (2000) or Cradle 2 The Grave (2003)
dir. Andrzej Bartkowiak
Somehow, and I won’t ever understand why or how, Jet Li was cast alongside the rapper DMX in not one, but TWO movies around the turn of the millenium, and both were hip-hop Hong Kong-style action flicks directed by veteran cinematographer Andrzej Bartkowiak, perhaps best known as the shooter of “Speed,” “Falling Down” and “The Devil’s Advocate.”
Amazing guy behind the camera. Incredible martial artist and actor with gravitas in front of the camera. And… DMX. Yeah, nope. There is absolutely NOTHING going on behind the eyes of rapper DMX who, in “Romeo Must Die,” plays Silk, a nighclub owner and who then GOT AN EXPANDED ROLE as co-lead in “Cradle 2 the Grave” as Anthony Fait, a diamond thief. He may have sold 74 million records, but he couldn’t convincingly sell 74 seconds as a tough guy in either film. As far as things go, the movies areenjoyable enough – although the x-ray clips that illustrate the damage done by Jet Li’s martial arts in “Romeo Must Die” are comically absurd as is the hilarious moment in “Cradle” when DMX runs about ten feet up a wall and does a backflip to outwit a chasing Doberman. But truly, the worst thing DMX does in these films is open his mouth, proving that “a man needs to know his limitations,” as Clint Eastwood once said.
Graffiti Bridge (1990)
dir. Prince
Yes, there was a sequel to Purple Rain. No, it was in no way necessary. And yes, it is 100% worse than Purple Rain, especially in the acting department, where Prince—doubling as director and star—seems to be competing with Morris Day for the gold medal in ham-fisted overacting.
Somehow, Graffiti Bridge is a movie where everything got worse: the acting, the script, the cinematography, and most importantly, the sense of purpose. Where Purple Rain was at least semi-autobiographical and fueled by Prince’s meteoric rise, Graffiti Bridge is a self-indulgent, neon-lit fever dream that feels like a bad poetry slam stretched into a feature film.
The “plot” (and I use that term loosely) finds Prince reprising his role as The Kid, now the owner of a club that’s under threat from Morris Day, who runs a rival club and wants to take over The Kid’s venue. But instead of feeling like a worthy continuation of Purple Rain, it plays out like an overlong music video—one that makes Moonwalker look like Citizen Kane. The dialogue is stilted, the pacing is a mess, and every scene that isn’t a performance sequence feels like it was shot on a soundstage that someone forgot to finish building.
Prince’s acting, if we can call it that, is oddly restrained in some moments and completely off-the-rails in others. He somehow manages to overthink and underact simultaneously, often staring off into space as if trying to will the movie into something coherent. But it never gets there. Morris Day, meanwhile, delivers lines as if he just realized he was in a sequel and is actively trying to get fired.
The film was nominated for five Golden Raspberry Awards, with Prince scoring nods for Worst Actor, Worst Director, and Worst Screenplay. And honestly? They were all deserved. This wasn’t just a letdown—it was a catastrophe, tarnishing Purple Rain’s legacy while proving that Prince, for all his undeniable genius as a musician, should never have been handed full creative control over a film.