Movie Review: Spice World

Little more than an excuse to exploit the success of the Spice Girls, Spice World is a grossly lacking film, even for those who enjoy the music. Essentially a ripoff of The Beatles "A Hard Days Night", the Spice Girls are unfortunately not nearly as famous and their music not nearly as universally recognized. A slew of cameos and familiar supporting cast members can't save the film from its own bad dialogue, poor choreography and painful lip-syncing. Apparently everyone was in it for the paycheck.

Piers Cuthbertson-Smyth (Alan Cumming) is a documentarian desperately trying to obtain footage for his latest project, a look at the popular five-girl singing group The Spice Girls: Ginger (Geri Halliwell), Baby (Emma Bunton), Posh (Victoria Beckham), Sporty (Melanie Chisholm) and Scary (Melanie Brown). While he struggles to sneak into parties and onto sets where they practice, the girls themselves prepare for a big stage show in England. Meanwhile, their eccentric manager is in cahoots with Chief (Roger Moore) the man who feels he is responsible for their success and can take it away with a snap of his fingers, or a caress of his squealing bovine. And if that isn't enough, a mysterious paparazzi spy gets carried away snapping pictures of the fivesome and pasting it all over the headlines. To top it all off, a pair of filmmakers pitch their idea of a Spice Girl movie to studio executives, which as it turns out, is basically the very movie we're watching.

Since the story of the film is largely pointless, and little else really holds attention spans, it is easy to pick out inaccuracies and bits of concepts that don't quite add up. For starters, the girls drive around in the Spice Bus, a blue and red monstrosity that has an impossibly large interior. So impossibly large in fact, that it doesn't even pretend to make sense. Workout equipment, couches, beds and all sorts of other furniture are scattered throughout the inside of the bus, in shots that are clearly not capable of being inside the bus. And yet the filmmakers go so far as to show the flashing lights of other vehicles zipping by the bus windows, even though the realism has long since been abandoned.

While each Spice Girl physically embodies stereotypical fashions, physiques and attitudes, those characteristics don't translate over to their personalities. Either they were all scripted to be ditzy, or they're just naturally that way. Through constant daydream sequences they act out various scenarios, most of which are intended as comedy relief, despite the blatant absence of humor. Similarly, the dance and song segments arise from nonsensical situations, and they're choreographed with little self-respect, and with obnoxious elements such as an Army dance instructor and poor lip-syncing. Alan Cumming plays a character very much like we envision him to be in his everyday life, and Roger Moore embarrassingly plays a villain who strokes various furry animals and speaks in riddles, an obvious farce of his own James Bond evildoers.

With brief appearances by Elton John, Bob Hoskins and other well-known Brits, a wholeheartedly unexciting speedboat adventure, and countless attempts at failed humor, Spice World is still unable to create entertainment that reaches beyond diehard fans of the all-girl group. And even entertaining those fans is debatable. When the group revives an unconscious sick kid by suggesting that Ginger Spice take her top off, it's apparent that their true talents are not in the music.

- Mike Massie (www.MoviePulse.net)