Vanilla’s hardcore comeback got you down? Miss the Iceman you once adored?

Then head to your nearby video store and rent Vanilla Ice’s classic 1991 feature film, “Cool As Ice.”

The film features the go-white-boy-rapper of “Ice Ice Baby” fame at his best, cruisin’ on his crotch rocket, mackin’ on some honeys and bustin’ some bad dudes while he’s at it.

Sure, the film was nominated for seven Razzies (the opposite of the Oscars), including Worst Actor and Worst Picture, but it only “won” one award — Vanilla for Worst New Star.

Like all great art, it takes critics a few years to discover its true brilliance. Even “Citizen Kane” wasn’t considered a masterpiece until Orson Welles was well past his prime.

Think I’m joking? Type “Cool As Ice” into amazon.com and you’ll find the going rate of the movie is $79.04 — and that’s 13 percent off the list price!

I guess the joke is on the pawn shop owner who laughed at me when I bought my copy from him last year for three bucks.

There are several reasons to merit “Cool As Ice” a high-priced classic.

For one, Vanilla’s character, Johnny Van Own, epitomizes everything we loved about the Iceman in our junior high days.

Ice explains it best in the official press kit for the movie (generously donated to me by fellow Iowa State student Mike Irwin):

“He’s a rapper, he rides a bike and he does pretty well with the ladies, so the acting came pretty easy for me,” Ice says.

Which brings me to my second point: “Cool As Ice” is simply hilarious.

Vanilla’s one-liners are so un-money, they’re funny.

“Yo Kat,” he says to his crush, Kathy. “Drop that zero, and get with the hero.”

Or the scene when Ice struts up to her door, gives a one-fisted knock, takes a smooth step back, and greets her father with a nice, “Yo, yo, yo. Wuzup?”

That’s comedy.

What makes it even better is that the father is played by Michael Gross, best known for his role as Steven Keaton in “Family Ties.”

Another reason for the film’s resurgence of coolness could be that director David Kellogg, like Ice, is in the midst of a comeback. Kellogg will release the second flick of his career later this year, the long-awaited “Inspector Gadget.”

So now that I’ve convinced you to rent “Cool As Ice,” let me share a bit of rare background information about it.

Vanilla, who was a motorcross racer before his days as a flavor of the month rapper, had a custom road racing bike designed especially for the film.

“I even had them paint it my color — neon yellow,” he says in the press kit.

And the funky fresh graffiti jeans he sports in the flick — also especially made for “Cool As Ice.” Baba, who did Ice’s tour clothes, was brought in to hand-paint the jeans.

“Cool As Ice” was the brainchild of executive producer Shep Gordon, a horror movie guru whose resume boasts John Carpenter’s “Village of the Damned” and Wes Craven’s “The People Under the Stairs.”

To give you an idea of how in tune Gordon was to popular music at the time, he said this to the Hollywood Reporter just before the release of “Cool As Ice”:

“Vanilla Ice is closely akin to the career of Elvis Presley in that there was a genre black music scene — in that case the blues, in this case rap — that a white artist came along and took to the masses.”

And, of course, supermodel Naomi Campbell makes a cameo appearance in the opening sequence, so be sure to keep your eyes on the prize.

In the words of Vanilla in “Cool As Ice”: It’s time to G – O.

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Cory Moss is a senior in journalism and mass communication from Urbandale