{"id":3857,"date":"2024-09-06T04:10:01","date_gmt":"2024-09-06T04:10:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=3857"},"modified":"2024-10-12T21:38:07","modified_gmt":"2024-10-12T21:38:07","slug":"spice-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/09\/06\/spice-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Spice World"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Spice World <\/strong>(1997)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Columbia\/Musical-Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 93 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG (some vulgarity, brief nudity, language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Bob Spiers\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Kim Fuller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Paul Hardcastle\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Clive Tickner\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: December 27, 1997 (UK)\/January 23, 1998 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 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\u2019Brien, George Wendt, Mark McKinney, Michael Barrymore, Richard Briers, Neil Mullarkey, Dominic West, Perdita Weeks, Devon Anderson.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cameos: Elton John, Bob Geldof, Elvis Costello, Bob Hoskins, Jennifer Saunders, Hugh Laurie, Stephen Fry, Jonathan Ross, Peter Sissons.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $29.3M (US)\/$100M (World)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: \u00bd *<\/p>\n

\u00a0Spice World<\/strong> is concrete proof that some movies don\u2019t improve with age. It sucked when it landed in theaters in \u2018 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 \u201cgirl power\u201d mantra. Look, I\u2019m 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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0As you call tell, I was not a Spice Girls fan. I never liked them or their music. I really didn\u2019t want to see a movie starring them. I fully intended on skipping Spice World<\/strong> 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\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The press kit described Spice World<\/strong> as \u201ca modern version of A Hard Day\u2019s Night\u201d. I think NOT! Although similar in concept (a day in the life of a successful musical group), the two movies couldn\u2019t be more different. The biggest difference is that the Beatles had talent. The Spice Girls don\u2019t. Each Beatle had a distinctive personality. The Spice Girls don\u2019t. They have personality types. Their stage names are the only way to tell them apart. A Hard Day\u2019s 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<\/strong> is bloody awful. All their songs sound alike to me. I couldn\u2019t hum a few bars of any of them even if I wanted to. Whatever love anybody had for their \u201cmusic\u201d wasn\u2019t handed down to future generations. Let\u2019s not forget the most obvious difference. A Hard Day\u2019s Night is excellent while Spice World<\/strong> is lousy. It\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0You may have noticed I haven\u2019t talked about the plot of Spice World<\/strong>. What can one say about something that\u2019s 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\u2019Brien, The Rocky Horror Picture Show) to help him ruin the girls\u2019 reputations with fake stories. There\u2019s also a childbirth and an encounter with aliens. All the while, we\u2019re forced to listen to the Spice Girls\u2019 inane chatter as they travel from place to place in a double-decker bus painted like a Union Jack flag.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Would it shock you beyond belief if I told you somebody actually took the time to write a screenplay for Spice World<\/strong>? 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<\/strong>. Nothing that happens to the Spice Girls is even remotely amusing or interesting. The Spice Girls themselves aren\u2019t interesting either. They\u2019re not even individuals. They operate more like a unit. They\u2019re untalented as a unit, they\u2019re dumb as a unit and they\u2019re annoying as a unit. They go around as a five-girl mob. They\u2019re 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\u2019t act, not even a little bit. If pressed to pick out one Spice Girl as the worst, I\u2019d go with Posh who always looks bored and aloof no matter what\u2019s going on around her. London Bridge could fall down right in front of her and it wouldn\u2019t faze her. She\u2019d just make some off-hand comment about her Gucci dress.<\/p>\n

\u00a0To be fair, all of the acting in Spice World<\/strong> is terrible. It\u2019s hard to watch distinguished actors like Grant and Cumming embarrass themselves like they do here. I can\u2019t 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\u2019 record label. His dialogue consists of gibberish, nonsense and indecipherable statements, none worth repeating. I\u2019ll admit I enjoyed seeing two Rocky Horror stars (Richard O\u2019Brien 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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0There\u2019s a scene I\u2019m convinced is inspired by the pitch meeting for Spice World<\/strong>. The two Hollywood writers are watching an interview with the Spice Girls on TV. The idea of a movie comes up. One writer asks, \u201cBut can they act?\u201d Although we\u2019re only about ten minutes into the movie, the answer to that question is already crystal clear. Then the writer pitches his idea. It goes, \u201cIt\u2019s the Spice Girls. There\u2019s five of them… and they\u2019re singers.\u201d With those few words, he tells the whole plot of Spice World<\/strong>. The movie\u2019s best line is their musical director\u2019s summation of one of their performances, \u201cThat was absolutely perfect without being actually any good.\u201d It sums up Spice World<\/strong> so succinctly.<\/p>\n

\u00a0As much as I\u2019d like to, I can\u2019t describe Spice World<\/strong> as a miserable viewing experience. It\u2019s way too upbeat for that. It\u2019s nauseatingly upbeat and cheerful. I almost feel guilty trashing it. I said, almost. Truthfully, it\u2019s a lousy movie. It\u2019s hollow, pointless, moronic and not the least bit fun. It\u2019s not even a good bad movie. It\u2019s 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<\/strong> a second time after all these years? In that time, I successfully blocked out almost all of it; now it\u2019s all come back to me in the form of a dull, pounding headache. I\u2019ll have to try to re-block it; just remind me in another 23 years NOT to re-re-watch it.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Spice World (1997)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Columbia\/Musical-Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 93 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG (some vulgarity, brief nudity, language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Bob Spiers\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Kim Fuller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Paul Hardcastle\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Clive Tickner\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: December 27, 1997 (UK)\/January 23, 1998 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: The Spice Girls (Mel B, Emma Bunton, Melanie C, Geri Horner and Victoria Adams), Richard E. Grant, Alan Cumming, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5284,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-musical","category-this-sucks-so-bad"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/Spice-World-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3857"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3857\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5285,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3857\/revisions\/5285"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}