Can you say 'Bad'? Can you say 'Terrible'? Can you say 'Disaster'?

Rating: 2/10 (28 January 2008)

About half way through Spice World, it dawned on me that it wasn't going to get any better than the level it was maintaining and a nasty thought hit me: "when people ask me why I actually motivated myself to sit down and watch this all the way through, I am going to have to think of something to say in reply rather than merely shrug and look down at the floor in embarrassment." I found myself for the next ten minutes thinking up various excuses I could use as reasons but eventually settled for 'Curiosity'.
Yes; when a film is so bad it motivates you to actually think up reasons you're going to have to say to people when they ask you why you watched it, it's struggling. As it was with Thunderbirds, I was curious as to know what the hell it was all about. I was old enough to remember the Spice Girls and old enough to dislike them but distinctly recall this film getting released. Following the break up and now apparent reunification, Spice World as a film doesn't even hold together as a piece of nostalgic nonsense that should be good enough to kill a few hours as we watch global female icons strut around in little costumes and sing silly little songs. Spice World does not even give us the luxury of having a plot; instead it is more of a documentary-come-spoof of not only the band in question but certain generic films of yesteryear. This means it plays out more like Epic Movie than anything else.
Spice World is really just one massive contradiction. It contradicts itself, its characters contradict what they want to be and how they want to be seen as and even the immediate ending contradicts whether or not it is a film within a film. At the time of the Spice Girls, there was very much an atmosphere of the band wanting to take over. The title of this film: 'Spice World' suggests a world full of 'spice'; the video for the song of the same name is set in a dystopian future where everything is exactly that; the 'V' sign the girls use to signify girl power is commonly associated with 'victory', ie; Victory, girl power rules'; there is also the familiar sight of a band cashing in on consumerism and globalisation as they make their presence more known around the world. But rather than Spice World posing as some sort of political/musical version of Battleship Potemkin; its scenes play out more like a retread of films that we've already seen. Roger Moore was James Bond and he spoofs the Bond villain persona; Richard E. Grant sits and listens to film pitches alá The Player and the final incident involving a bomb blowing up not only means the film is confused as to whether its fiction or not but whether or not it thinks the fourth wall is reparable once it has been broken.
The worst example of contradictory content in the film comes very early on when the girls are sitting in a bus, that looks more like an actual room than anything else, discussing how they hate being seen as the 'baby'; the 'posh one' the 'scary one', etc. Fine you think, maybe they are getting sick of that but what follows is an immediate counteraction to their complaint in the form of a montage showing each of the girls dressed as Wonder Woman, Marilyn Monroe and then of each other. The girls go from wearing their clothes, acting dumb and stating that "there's more to us than just our persona tags" to..........wearing even more clothes and costumes and acting in an even dumber manner. You can imagine the thought process: so Ginger Spice doesn't like to be called Ginger Spice anymore; "Ok, I know; I'll dress up like Wonder Woman and crack a whip." Yes, I can see there's so much more to you than your generic tags. The other glaring example of contradiction in this film that the girls fall foul of comes in the form of their allegiances. Nearer the beginning of the film rather than the middle, the girls talk about how important their fans are to them; this idea returns to haunt them since the actual final third revolves around a dilemma the girls face: stay with a friend as they give birth and shun fans waiting at the gig or vice-versa. There should be no argument: they've established their fans come first but what happens is they counter balance their priorities by staying in the hospital with their pregnant friend.
Spice World is a film that does absolutely no favours for anyone and that includes the girls themselves. The Spice Girls come across as plastic, one-dimensional and rather stupid; frequently getting their priorities, beliefs and ideas mixed up with one another; never giving us the impression these are smart and good people making smart and good music. The film's portrayal of Italians and homosexuals is disappointing as is the incompetent film crew consisting of a black man and a fat person; the way the bad guy is a fat, spitting Australian bent on magazine sales who has an English assistant is horrible; the film's narrative wants us to believe that stuff being printed in the newspapers by a man who gets the scoops in an impossible manner is entertaining and realistic but it's just silly. There just isn't enough space to cover all the things horribly wrong with this film but I am surprised this didn't destroy the Spice Girls when it first came out. Cheap laughs; a nasty narrative; horrible archetypes and so many times in which the focus band of the title come across as incompetent is enough to label this trash, 'trash'.