Review of Spice World The Movie
This is a word of warning - it’s very likely that the rest of this review will be nothing more than a page of fangirl ramblings. You have been warned, I am a hardcore Spice Girls fan.
I always wonder why people lambast this movie as nothing but a pile of steaming horse manure. Do they not see its purpose? The Spice Girls didn’t set out to make the world’s best movie, nor to make a deeply moving, dramatic, women’s picture about various problems with society. What they were trying to do, was to make a movie that would appeal to their key fanbase, that would provide a few laughs as one watches the girls in their ‘natural’ interactions with each other…and they succeeded in doing that.
It’s definitely an entertaining movie, incorporating dozens of funny little interactions between the different girls (my personal favourite - Victoria lamenting the difficulty in choosing what to wear: the little Gucci dress, the little Gucci dress, or the little Gucci dress). They definitely play up to their public personas, with Sporty being sporty, Posh being posh, Baby being babyish, and so on. Yet, the girls know how to make fun of their personas too, with a funny scene in the movie showing them dressing up as each other, and finding out what it’s like to walk in each other’s shoes.
The movie incorporates dozens of the Spice Girls songs into the movie cleanly, with none of them ever seeming strange or out-of-place in their respective scenes. However, considering that some scenes are strange in themselves (the aliens scene in particular), this mightn’t be anything astonishing.
With a multitude of personal appearances by the cream de la creme of the British music and entertainment industries (watch out for Joanna Lumley as the posh woman - my personal favourite!), Spiceworld really is an amazing film. Barry Humphries plays the dastardly tabloid editor with great aplomb, and Richard E. Grant seems to revel in his role as the uptight manager of the girls.
The movie also has a nice message about the price of fame - the loss of old friendships, the neglect of friends, the lack of privacy, the lack of ‘alone time’…the movie teaches us that fame isn’t everything, but that friendship conquers all, as all five girls jeopardise a world-televised concert in order to accompany their best friend to the labour ward of the hospital.
To sum up, this movie is highly underrated. Don’t judge it as you would an Oscar contender, but judge it as a movie that aims to get you up on your feet and singing and dancing to the song and dance routines…and believe me, you will not be disappointed.