Review of Spice World (1997) by Samantha W — 30 Mar 2010

I remember recalling a poll conducted in Great Britain which basically asked the question, "What DVD have you rented through a rental service such as Netflix which you would be most embarrassed to admit?" Not surprisingly, Spice World was in the top ten.

For those fortunate enough to have lived through the 90's, in times when MTV was still about the music with the occasional breaks for Daria, Beavis and Butthead, and Tom Green, you most likely were affected by the "Spice Phenomenon". With their platform shoes and "Girl Power," a female pop group from the UK called the Spice Girls took over the world, and captured the charts. Though the group was manufactured (as in they were mashed together as a "girl band" by some producers), they broke the mold when it came to female pop groups. Each member had their own unique persona, which was accentuated by their titles: Posh Spice, Baby Spice, Sporty Spice, Ginger Spice, and Scary Spice. With their catchy lyrics infused with feminist themes and self confidence, girls of all ages (especially the demographic known as "tweens" nowadays) were screaming for them, and they were screaming for more.

So, what do you do with a phenomenon that will probably be the closest thing to "Beatlemania" that the 90's will ever experience? I'll give you some clues: A Hard Day's Night, Help!, The Yellow Submarine.

So, they made a movie, starring the Spice Girls along with a smattering of well known British stars, and the guy from Cheers, and the guy from Kids in the Hall that doesn't make the documentaries. Many of these stars only had cameos. One of them, Dominic West, known mostly from HBO's The Wire, has one as a photo shoot photographer; he later admitted in an interview with Entertainment Weekly that he only took the role in order to meet the Spice Girls. Then there's the ones like Elvis Costello as a bartender, and Roger Moore as something between a James Bond villain that isn't a villain and a recording studio executive; their presence in the film makes you wonder if.

A) They have terrible agents.

B) Had a daughter, granddaughter, niece, or goddaughter who was the most insane Spice Girls fan in the entire world and would not speak to them, or make their life a living hell if they did not take the role.

C) They owed someone a big, BIG favor.

D) Blackmail (hey, it happens).

E) Nothing like leaving the house for a day and getting paid for it.

Spice World is not an awful movie, nor is it an awesomely bad movie: it is a genre movie. Now, I'm not talking broad genres like comedy, action, or drama; I am talking about specific ones, like the Spaghetti Western, Musicals, and Crime Noir. Spice World is a British Pop Group Comedy. The group members act as themselves, and the film is basically an exaggerated, glamorized, fantasized, romanticized account of their lives as British Pop Super Stars with a comedic, campy feeling. There is no social message or moral of the story: its only purpose to sell more records while providing the audience a means of escape for an hour and a half.

Like the Beatles' A Hard Day's Night, the film ends with a big musical performance, but it is mostly about the hijinks and subplots that either made our British Pop Stars the way they are today, or almost prevent them from making it to their gig (if they didn't make it, no studio exec would ever give the green light for production). Sure, some feel good messages are thrown in here and there (Elvis movies are always great for improving funk moods), but you're only there really because of the music that is often absent.

Unlike Hard Days Night, which is respected and represents the stage of comedic evolution between The Goons and Monty Python's Flying Circus, Spice World is just homage to these things with the often cruel 90's twist (though in this case, it was harmless, I promise). Its main fault is that its target audience, the tweens, are not able to comprehend many of cultural references (which are incorporated quite cleverly) and subplots (which aren't all cliché and cheesy) with very mature overtones. Its other fault is that many of these references can be appreciated by the said tweens' parents, but because it all revolves a girl pop group whose songs' lyrics were considered very sexualized at the time, and feministic, many parents tuned out and saw chaperoning their children to the film as punishment.

When I first saw this film, I was in third grade. I had a bad triple infection (sinus, bronchial, ear) for a month, and my parents bought it on video to cheer me up. Mind you, I wasn't allowed to listen to Spice Girls until the time around they Ginger left the group, so I had a lot of catching up to do. I absolutely loved Spice World, really because I loved the Spice Girls. I had the Barbie Dolls, posters on my walls, had mini platform shoes, and my friends and I would even pretend to be the Spice Girls at recess.

For my eighteenth birthday, I got Spice World on DVD, and I still loved it. Except, this time around, I was able to appreciate the numerous cameos, cultural references, and mature subplots. I even respect the fact that there was an attempt to make what was really a marketing machine into an actual movie with a plot, even though it was silly and campy, there was still a plot.

Spice World is not mainstream, and not everyone will enjoy it. However, if nostalgia for 1990's ever manifests, it may be treated kinder by critics and audiences everywhere. Those who enjoy it are Spice Girls fans themselves, or lived during the 90's and miss the good old days. This will never be on TCM, but no one will judge you if you saw it while flipping through the channels late at night on basic cable.