How many people ever look back at the music they enjoyed when they were a kid and go ‘yikes’ but in the best of ways? It’s been confirmed that Dave Franco will be starring in a Vanilla Ice Biopic titled To The Extreme, after Ice’s big debut album that was able to get off the ground thanks to Ice Ice Baby. Even his movie, Cool As Ice, didn’t really do much, and his career from that time on started going down in a big way as a lot of people should remember. To be fair though, Robert Matthew Van Winkle, Ice’s real name, has been seen sporadically in pop culture throughout the years and he has made a few appearances that have been pretty funny. Considering that he’s a high school dropout and a former car salesman he went on to become one of the most famous rappers of his time, even showing up with a fairly decent song in the second Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie. But as a lot of us can admit his music kind of went downhill from there as he would eventually become more of a cautionary tale on the music scene than anything. But realistically he is still a part of music history and deserves his spot, so this biopic should be pretty interesting, to say the least.
It does sound as though Franco might be thinking about following the same formula that his brother James used for The Disaster Artist, the movie in which James Franco portrayed director/actor Tommy Wiseau. This could make it sound that Franco might be trying to make fun of Ice, but he’s been straightforward in stating that he’s looking to show how the rapper’s life was shaped by his early experiences and how his fame both came and went. If anything, it sounds as though Dave is taking Winkle’s story quite seriously and will let any humor simply happen. The sad part of this is that Ice’s story does have its highs, but it also has a few lows since his career went down the tubes in a big way in the 90s and only continued to plummet until it was determined that he still had some value. After he started showing up in movies and on TV it was obvious that he had more to offer than just his music, but it’s still been fairly slow-going ever since. If anyone remembers, he did have a short part in The New Guy and Adam Sandler’s movie That’s My Boy, and he’s been on a couple of reality shows throughout the years, basically being brought back now and again as a novelty in a lot of ways, even if he’s proven that he can act when he’s allowed to act like himself.
It’s possible that this biopic is going to be kind of amusing just on the off chance that Franco takes Ice’s full life into account. If the movie only focuses on a certain time period then it’s bound to be a little saddening since Ice’s career days made him a big star, but at the same time, there were a lot of issues behind the scenes. The whole Suge Knight incident, however it happened, has been a pretty big stain on his career for a while, as have the few arrests he’s had to deal with in the past. Somehow through all of this however Ice has still been a very common name to hear since he’s fame has never really gone away. To be fair, it’s dipped quite a bit and stayed on a more or less moderate course thanks to nostalgia and the fact that he is a pretty decent showman. But at this time his career is still only a fraction of what it used to be. At one point in his career, he opened for some of the biggest acts of the time, but now it’s hard to say whether he can even fill a stadium. There are still plenty of people that would love to go and see him perform, but with the current pandemic wreaking havoc with entertainment of all types, it’s hard to say whether or not he’s really going to be seen anywhere apart from this biopic.
For a lot of people, Vanilla Ice used to be a big name since he had the style, the music, and the moves. But as the 90s wore on things continued to change, as did the music, and after a while Ice was left behind and forced to fend for himself. It does appear that he’s done alright as of now, but this movie could possibly shed a lot of light on his earlier years and his career since Winkle is working with Franco on the picture. Hopefully, that means what we’ll see is bound to be as close to reality as possible.
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