Spice world - Le film

The Spice Girls.......what can be said about them that hasn't already been said? Well, for starters..none of them can act. Playing themselves (albeit slightly exaggerated) seems to be a stretch. The lone shining star as far as acting is Meat Loaf, who in his role as SpiceBus driver provides comedy release without being Jar-Jarish. The fact he delivers the line "hey I love these girls, and I'd do anything for them...but I won't do that..." without blushing is priceless.

This movie has some of the cheesiest scenes in the history of film, with the aliens scene being among the worst, but when this movie hits with the goofiness, it hits well. I still laugh to this day when I think of the plastic SpiceBus jumping over the plastic London Bridge. Surprisingly, one of the best musical numbers is the cafe scene...where the girls show that they actually do have some discernible talent.

This is the best summary of the movie I can give: I hated the Spice Girls until I saw this movie, and now I have to say that I actually own a CD of theirs

This movie is FUN. And the sad thing is that most people are too close-minded to see that. The general consensus seems to be: "It's the Spice Girls in a movie? It's going to be awful!" and either they never see the movie, or they allow their prejudices to judge the movie for them.

Firstly, let me say that I am not, and was never, a Spice Girls fan. I was way too old for their target market when they were popular, and whilst one or two of their songs had catchy tunes, some were downright annoying. They were a very cleverly manufactured girl band in a time when that market was wide-open. Giving each girl a distinctive character and style was a stroke of genius on the part of their 'creators', and while they didn't have particularly strong voices (except perhaps for Mel C), they didn't have particularly bad ones either. I've heard far worse. So I went into this movie purely out of curiosity, expecting it to be somewhere between awful and merely silly, but I ended up enjoying myself thoroughly. Also, my 65-year-old father loves this movie, and he saw it only having heard vaguely of the Spice Girls, but not knowing their music at all. Yes, Spiceworld is an exploitation movie; BUT it does an excellent job at it! What I loved most was the way it poked fun at itself all the way through. The character of the screenwriter pitching his idea to the girls' manager (brilliantly played by Richard E. Grant) saying "It's obvious to us that the Spicegirls are movie stars!", when it's obvious that they're not, and everyone knows it - there's even a scene at the beginning where he says, "Yes, but can they ACT?" and his boss responds with, 'Who cares?", or similar. I loved that. And while the girls CAN'T really act (some are worse than others; I've read that Victoria was the only one who had taken acting lessons before, but I can't say it showed since I thought she was the weakest link), it's obvious that they're having fun with the script, and they don't do too badly at all.

The script was another great surprise to me; it's full of good lines and funny characters that poke fun at themselves and their stereotypes. An example of this is the great Roger Moore playing the "Chief", who is presumably the Big Boss of the Spice Girls. We only ever see him on the phone with Clifford the manager (Richard E. Grant), and every time we do he is stroking, in pure Bond Villain (or Dr Evil) fashion, a small white animal on his lap. But every time you see him he has a different animal; first it's a cat, then a rabbit, a tiny white pig etc. I thought that was such a great way of poking fun at the stereotype of the villain always having a white pet. And then the character himself has these fantastically enigmatic, senseless, but hysterical lines, like: "When the rabbit of chaos is pursued by the ferret of disorder through the fields of anarchy, it is time to hang your pants on the hook of darkness. Whether they're clean or not." and: "The headless chicken can only know where he's been. He can't see where he's going. Do not be that chicken." I love that off-the-wall humour, and this movie is full of it. Of course, some people just don't GET that kind of humour, which is fine by me as long as it doesn't make them slam the film because of it.

Other moments I love, which elevate this film from could-have-been-dodgy to funny, are the casting of Meatloaf as the Spice Girls bus driver, and then having him say lines like: {on fixing the clogged toilets} "Hey, I love these girls. I'll do anything for them...but I won't do that!" - which is, of course, a play on Meatloaf's hit song "Anything for Love". Also the parody of the stereotypical characters of the girls, which of course were made up for them anyway, like Victoria not knowing what to wear, and Mel C saying "It must be really hard for you, Victoria, trying to decide whether to wear the little Gucci dress, or the little Gucci dress, or the little Gucci dress", and Victoria responding "Exactly!", or when Victoria falls into the Thames and continues to scream for help once she's been rescued, and yelling "This dress is dry-clean only!", or Geri saying "Calm down, haven't you ever heard of the word 'compromisation'?" There are scores of these great moments but they really work better in the film than if I wrote them down here. All I'm saying is that this movie is not ever in a million years as bad as everyone makes it out to be. Yes, it's not the greatest, but then most films aren't. It's so much funnier than you'd think, and yes it has its cheesy moments, but sometimes it's SUPPOSED to be cheesy! That's where it's funny. I really don't understand why this film, whose only aim was to be FUN, and in this it succeeded more than admirably in my opinion, is in IMDb's Worst.

While I found Ginger and Posh Spice hot growing up I wasn't really particularly a Spice Girls fan. But as years went on I found myself liking them and their music and thinking back on them fondly.

This film came out around the peak of their popularity in 1997. It's a pretty silly movie with a silly plot but as I said it's a guilty pleasure for me

I'm not even kidding, just think of any adjective and it probably accurately describes some aspect of this movie. That's about the only input I can possibly give, because describing it in any other way would portray it as "good", or "bad", or "somewhere in the middle", when really it isn't on that spectrum at all; it just is what it is, and that's that.

When I was seven and this movie came out, it was the biggest thing around. Everyone wanted to be the Spice Girls. After they split up and weren't cool anymore, everyone forgot about the movie. But ho, ho, what's this? Years later, here I am cleaning out my old Disney and Barney videos and stumble across my old friend that I used to watch everyday. Even at my old age of fifteen, never failed to crack me up.

Obviously, this isn't meant to be a contender for Oscars. Anyone can see that. But I can't find much to hate about a movie that's practically the visual to go along with the song "Girls just wanna have fun." That's all it is, fun. And a lot of good fun at that. It's just a guilty pleasure, and it's so much fun to watch it with old friends singing into hair brushes and wearing feather boas. You just need to keep in mind that it was publicity for their new record and it's not meant to be one of those heavy movies you over-analyze. Recommendation: This movie is much funner when you watch it jumping up and down on a couch like a seven year old.