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IT'S FAIRLY SAFE to say that any movie whose opening night audience consists of two reviewers and a 15-year old boy in a trenchcoat will not be in video stores by the end of the month.

But to give credit where it is due, Cool As Ice is the best thing rapper/thief/hair model Vanilla Ice has done in his brief career. The movie is, of course, terrible, but it is terrible in such an innocent and pathetic way that it's hard not to give the Iceman some sympathy for trying.

A clever moviegoer will realize very quickly that Cool As Ice some important movie attractions. Like a coherent plot. And dialogue. And acting. And sex. And humor.

But none of that matters, because there are plenty of close-ups of Ice's fine-looking cheekbones and fabulously patterned hair (a blond pouf in front and several geometric designs on the side for those keeping score), a bunch of music video scenes with bustier-clad blonds dancing to Ice's new tunes ("I love a girl/And then I diss the same one/Because I know there's more where that came from"), and lots and lots of clothes. Clothes in every color of the neon rainbow, clothes with words on them, clothes with Haringesque graffiti on them, gang clothes, dance clothes, nerd clothes, and even one or two items not made of Lycra.

The plot of Cool As Ice makes little sense. Ice plays Johnny, a rapper who seems to play concerts in urban parking garages. For no apparent reason, he takes a motorcycle trip with his three Black sidekicks out to the country, which--judging by the scenery--begins in California, turns into Kentucky and Utah in quick succession, and returns to California. In any case, they break down in a small, rich, white town and have to stay for a few days while their bikes get fixed.

Ice falls for a local, horse-riding, 1600-SAT high school senior named Kathy (Kristin Minter, who gives a great performance, considering the lameness of the dialogue). Soon, Kathy's father (Michael Gross, formerly the father on "Family Ties") runs into some trouble with some bad guys. The quality of Gross's performance suggests that we will soon be seeing him in ads for Depend undergarments.

Ice shakes up the town, beating up Kathy's WASPy boyfriend. Dad thinks Ice is involved with the bad guys. More fights. More motorcycles. Ice saves the day, and Kathy changes from Laura Ashley jumpers to spandex miniskirts.

Along the way we get to hear Ice utter such gems of dialogue as: "It ain't where you're from. It's where you're at," and "If you ain't true to yourself, you ain't true to nobody." Draw your own conclusions, but the Ice I know grew up in a suburb of Dallas, and his name was Robbie Van Winkle.

Cool as Ice does serve as an excellent example of the triumph of hip-hop urban cool over middle America. It is an old story: the street kid on the bike with bad grammar is the coolest thing there is. The small-town girls fall for him, and the small-town boys idolize him and imitate his haircut. And not only does he vanquish their Seventies rock with his rap, he also captures the crooks when the WASPs fail.

But it is such a safe and cliched form of rebellion for the town to fall for. Yes, he rides his cycle without a helmet, but he is just a nice, handsome, kind, brave white boy who doesn't even use profanity in his raps. He is Elvis in gang clothes and sunglasses, but without the talent. The Black sidekicks, on the other hand, literally sit in a garage for three-quarters of the movie, away from the white town, hidden away from the impressionable and seducable white kids.

Given the overwhelming mediocrity of Vanilla Ice's rapping and acting, given the silence that has greeted the opening of this movie, and given the recent history of pop superstardom (e.g. Tiffany), it's a good bet that Ice's career is over. He probably could retire on the royalties of "Ice Ice Baby" and go silently into the Miami night, but he won't. Instead we will have to watch him slide painfully from one failure to another: first a failed movie, then a failed album, then a failed comeback, in ever-gaudier clothes, with ever more complicated hair.