Spice World (1997) Columbia/Musical-Comedy RT: 93 minutes Rated PG (some vulgarity, brief nudity, language) Director: Bob Spiers Screenplay: Kim Fuller Music: Paul Hardcastle Cinematography: Clive Tickner Release date: December 27, 1997 (UK)/January 23, 1998 (US) Cast: The Spice Girls (Mel B, Emma Bunton, Melanie C, Geri Horner and Victoria Adams), Richard E. Grant, Alan Cumming, Roger Moore, Claire Rushbrook, Naoko Mori, Meat Loaf, Barry Humphries, Jason Flemyng, Richard O’Brien, George Wendt, Mark McKinney, Michael Barrymore, Richard Briers, Neil Mullarkey, Dominic West, Perdita Weeks, Devon Anderson. Cameos: Elton John, Bob Geldof, Elvis Costello, Bob Hoskins, Jennifer Saunders, Hugh Laurie, Stephen Fry, Jonathan Ross, Peter Sissons. Box Office: $29.3M (US)/$100M (World)
Rating: ½ *
Spice World is concrete proof that some movies don’t improve with age. It sucked when it landed in theaters in ‘ 98 and still sucks now. It stars the Spice Girls, a British pop group that was briefly popular in the late 90s. It consisted of five young women, all of whom went by aliases- Scary Spice (Mel B), Baby Spice (Bunton), Sporty Spice (Melanie C), Ginger Spice (Horner) and Posh Spice (Adams, aka the future Mrs. David Beckham). For a short time, they were icons to tween girls worldwide with their “girl power” mantra. Look, I’m all for female empowerment, but I hardly think the Spice Girls deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as actual feminist icons like Gloria Steinem and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
As you call tell, I was not a Spice Girls fan. I never liked them or their music. I really didn’t want to see a movie starring them. I fully intended on skipping Spice World altogether. Fate had other plans. I got roped into attending a pre-release screening by the studio rep, my old pal Clyde (RIP), who laid a heavy guilt trip on me after I told him I wasn’t the least bit interested in it. So it was that I gave in and went to the screening. Walking through the lobby, I felt like a condemned prisoner walking the final mile. For the next 93 minutes, I thought I was in a bubble-gum pop version of Hell.
The press kit described Spice World as “a modern version of A Hard Day’s Night”. I think NOT! Although similar in concept (a day in the life of a successful musical group), the two movies couldn’t be more different. The biggest difference is that the Beatles had talent. The Spice Girls don’t. Each Beatle had a distinctive personality. The Spice Girls don’t. They have personality types. Their stage names are the only way to tell them apart. A Hard Day’s Night was filled with great music by the Beatles. Every song is a classic. People still love their music more than a half century later. The music in Spice World is bloody awful. All their songs sound alike to me. I couldn’t hum a few bars of any of them even if I wanted to. Whatever love anybody had for their “music” wasn’t handed down to future generations. Let’s not forget the most obvious difference. A Hard Day’s Night is excellent while Spice World is lousy. It’s painful to the eyes, ears and brain. It wants to recapture the spirit of the Beatles so badly, it (sort of) borrows a scene from Magical Mystery Tour. It ends up recapturing it badly.
You may have noticed I haven’t talked about the plot of Spice World. What can one say about something that’s basically non-existent? It follows the Spice Girls over the three days leading to a major gig at Royal Albert Hall. We watch as they interact with the people in their Spice World. Their manager Clifford (Grant, Withnail & I) has his hands full keeping them on schedule with all their rehearsals and public appearances. He must also contend with a couple of Hollywood types, played by George Wendt (Cheers) and Mark McKinney (The Kids in the Hall), pitching terrible ideas for a movie starring his clients. A relentless documentary filmmaker (Cumming, Titus) and his camera crew follow the girls around. A tabloid newspaper owner (Humphries, better known as Dame Edna Everage), looking to sell more papers, dispatches a sneaky photographer (O’Brien, The Rocky Horror Picture Show) to help him ruin the girls’ reputations with fake stories. There’s also a childbirth and an encounter with aliens. All the while, we’re forced to listen to the Spice Girls’ inane chatter as they travel from place to place in a double-decker bus painted like a Union Jack flag.
Would it shock you beyond belief if I told you somebody actually took the time to write a screenplay for Spice World? That dishonor belongs to Kim Fuller who would go on to pen the screenplay for the musical flop From Justin to Kelly which looks like a masterpiece next to Spice World. Nothing that happens to the Spice Girls is even remotely amusing or interesting. The Spice Girls themselves aren’t interesting either. They’re not even individuals. They operate more like a unit. They’re untalented as a unit, they’re dumb as a unit and they’re annoying as a unit. They go around as a five-girl mob. They’re always together, even when they hop off their tour bus to pee in the woods. Because of this, I will judge them as a unit. Their collective performance is terrible. They can’t act, not even a little bit. If pressed to pick out one Spice Girl as the worst, I’d go with Posh who always looks bored and aloof no matter what’s going on around her. London Bridge could fall down right in front of her and it wouldn’t faze her. She’d just make some off-hand comment about her Gucci dress.
To be fair, all of the acting in Spice World is terrible. It’s hard to watch distinguished actors like Grant and Cumming embarrass themselves like they do here. I can’t even describe what they do as campy because it would be an insult to camp. At least Roger Moore (the former James Bond) has the good sense to distance himself from all the idiocy. He literally phones it in as the head of the girls’ record label. His dialogue consists of gibberish, nonsense and indecipherable statements, none worth repeating. I’ll admit I enjoyed seeing two Rocky Horror stars (Richard O’Brien and Meat Loaf) and one Shock Treatment star (Humphries) in the same movie. HOWEVER, Humphries delivers the most embarrassing performance in the movie AND of his career. Meat Loaf gets off a not-unfunny line referencing one of his songs.
There’s a scene I’m convinced is inspired by the pitch meeting for Spice World. The two Hollywood writers are watching an interview with the Spice Girls on TV. The idea of a movie comes up. One writer asks, “But can they act?” Although we’re only about ten minutes into the movie, the answer to that question is already crystal clear. Then the writer pitches his idea. It goes, “It’s the Spice Girls. There’s five of them… and they’re singers.” With those few words, he tells the whole plot of Spice World. The movie’s best line is their musical director’s summation of one of their performances, “That was absolutely perfect without being actually any good.” It sums up Spice World so succinctly.
As much as I’d like to, I can’t describe Spice World as a miserable viewing experience. It’s way too upbeat for that. It’s nauseatingly upbeat and cheerful. I almost feel guilty trashing it. I said, almost. Truthfully, it’s a lousy movie. It’s hollow, pointless, moronic and not the least bit fun. It’s not even a good bad movie. It’s just plain BAD, all caps followed by three exclamation points!!! Directed by Bob Spiers (Fawlty Towers), it gives other bad movies a bad name. A movie of supreme stupidity, I had to find other things to think about to get my mind off the agony. Two thoughts crossed my mind with great frequency. The first is spatial in nature. Why does their bus look so bigger on the inside than it does from the outside? Second, what was I thinking watching Spice World a second time after all these years? In that time, I successfully blocked out almost all of it; now it’s all come back to me in the form of a dull, pounding headache. I’ll have to try to re-block it; just remind me in another 23 years NOT to re-re-watch it.
