Directed by: Bob Spiers
Written by: Kim Fuller and Jamie Curtis (not the actress)

Starring: The Spice Girls as The Spice Girls

I feel the need to set the scene with this review. Possibly more so than with any other. So here it is:

I just got home after a long day. I'm tired. In order to properly hear a movie I have to turn off the A/C. It's hot outside. So now my apartment is heating up every second while this thing goes on.

I tell you this to explain that I am still utterly unbiased when I say that Spice World is terrible.

The DVD proclaims "Guaranteed: This DVD is loaded with GIRL POWER!" Loaded, huh? Loaded like a twice baked potato, perhaps? Shit, did I mention I'm also hungry? Fuck. Anyway, the movie...

This review will be done raw. I type as I watch, and that is what you read. It will spoil every inch of this film. Because you don't want to see it, so I'm doing you a favor. It will be disjointed at times, random, whatever the hell it needs to be. So warned… we begin:

I only saw one option when renting this. Sadly, I didn't know it would be full screen. Yes, even for Spice World I would prefer widescreen. Oh well, how much could they have chopped out? Did we lose the giant pan shot of Sporty as she flies through the skies in a jet in order to save the world? I can't imagine we did.

The opening is done like a 60s Bond film, all psychedelic colors and slow dancing, as they introduce each of the Spice Girls to some bad porn music. Fitting, really. The bad porn music that is, not the colors and fun. Fun has no place here.

Oh my lord, Alan Cumming is in this. It might have ho--... no hope; they started singing. So far three of them have lip synced to show us that they're all singing except the voice hasn't changed at all. Are we supposed to be fooled by this?

Ahhhh, okay, pan down to a concert setting. Geri is wearing a white dress that reads "Mind Power, Super Girl, GERI." Why does she need her name on her dress? Can't she remember who she is?

Alan Cumming is a guy who is spending time with the Spice... Wait why is Elton John here? God he looks like a Muppet.

Their manager guy is played by Darwin Mayflower! That's somehow wonderful.

Now they're in their tour bus which is a tesseract, much bigger inside than out. Are the Spice Girls secretly Time Lords? Who knew? What the fuck is going on? Where's K-9?

And now Norm, from Cheers? Is that Norm? I think it is Norm! NORM!

And Norm is planning on making a Spice Girls movie. How very meta, it's a movie about a band that makes a movie about their band? What? Roger Moore? Where'd he come from?

All right the directing is ham-handed. The writing is clumsy. It's just so very... amateur. And we're ten minutes in.

Alan Cumming is making a Spice girls documentary? Huh?

And their preggers pal says, "Just wait till you lot start having kids," and enter dream sequence! This is inspired. Inspired the same way taking a piss is. You have to do it so you might as well do it. But it isn't fucking art, is it?

Time for another musical interlude. It makes sense I suppose; what else can they do? They can't act, that I know. They can all do a normal dancing around casual thing except Posh. Posh shakes twice and poses then holds it and shakes twice more to stop into a pose. What the fuck? Is she a robot? Well, we know she is now, but here's the groundwork.

There's no plot yet. Twenty minutes in and not a hint of a plot. Not the smallest hint. Ahh ha! There it is. Crooked newspaper man plans to break the Spice Girls apart so he can get a good story out of it.

We just spent a few minutes at a photo shoot, watching them get their pictures taken. That's it. That was the entire scene. A photo shoot. They dressed up. There was laughing and still frames with camera clicks. And laughing and music.

And then we went back to the stupid.

Their one friend, the knocked up one, is Asian. So what? Well, she is the one nationality not really in the Spice Girls. I mean granted there are more nationalities not represented but I find it odd that they're one friend is a little preggers Asian woman.

Now they've flown to Milan to lip sync. I don't get it. Wasn't there a plot growing somewhere?

Anyway. Darwin Mayflower is making this movie for me. There's nothing else there, of course, so doing that isn't hard. I mean so far it's disconnected scenes mostly involving bad lip syncing and worse dancing. But Darwin (and for those of you without a love for Hudson Hawk: When I say "Darwin Mayflower" just think "Richard E. Grant" since that's the actor's name.)

Wait. They have a bus that is huge inside, it even has a kitchen we're told. We keep getting announcements about the kitchen in fact. But they need to stop it to go to the bathroom? And they get out to go pee in the woods? Ahhhh. Meatloaf, the bus driver I AM NOT KIDDING IT'S MEATLOAF, mentioned that the bathrooms are all broken at once.

In the woods and a spaceship lands. A giant UFO. Aliens get out and are fans of the Spice Girls. Aliens. They want tickets to the big show. They're upset they can't get tickets so now they want autographs. There's humor here, see, because the aliens don't speak any Earth language but the Spice Girls can understand them. Ha! HAHA! Ha... no it isn't funny.

Their manager, Darwin, doesn't believe them when they tell him about the aliens. But it is meaningless. Because everything is disconnected.

Oh God, now we're going to DANCE CAMP. Fuck. I think I just slipped into a coma. Minute forty-one. Out of about ninety-three? Half way and nothing at all has happened. Seriously. There are teases of a possible plot, but it hasn't actually started yet.

I bet there is gonna be a dance montage any second now. Ahhh, yes here it is now. A military dance montage. Wearing fatigues. And marching and and and... their little song referred to "the power of spice." The Spice is the life, right? Sandworm Spice? Is it time?

No, it isn't time. It's time for... uhm... a disconnected scene again, oh, the hint of plot. The guy the news guy hired to break them apart crawled out of a toilet. And now it's a bad Scooby Doo type of horror episode. As the Spice Girls wander in the dark looking around and are now going to sleep in the same bed because they're scared of the old house they're in. This could go right to porn, you realize. Right here. But it won't.

Okay, so they are also scared because the big show is their first live concert. The newspaper reported on it, and now Darwin is mad in his leather pants and vest with purple shirt.

Some kids won a contest to ride in the bus with the Spice Girls, but the Spice Girls escape the bus with the kids and grab a nearby boat and isn't this now kidnapping? Well, now we have endangerment as some of them fell off the boat. But they lived! Everything is fine! YAY!

OH BUT WAIT! The toilet emerging man has proof of the kids falling off the boat, and now it hits the papers! Oh no’s! I... how is this the plot? How is this a problem? Two seconds of bad press? Seriously? Geri got more bad press for those nude pics. Why don't they re-enact those? Of course not.

And now they're all mad and stalked off, and Darwin doesn't know what to do! Poor Darwin.

They're all separate now and thinking back to when they were poor and a band that just wanted to make it. Uhm, is that the line they wanna push? That they all found each other through being old friends who could all sing? And yet have never played a live concert before now? I mean come on! But it wouldn't be right without a musical moment. Of them poor and dancing and singing.

Now they can all remember the same night and collect around the closed coffee shop they remembered. This will pull them back together if anything could! YAY! Now nothing can stop them because they've remembered the power of friendship!

Save me.

Okay wait. They're in the hospital because the preggers one is gonna pop. So some parents ask if they can come talk to their unconscious son to try and wake him up. It works. They have the power to heal the world! They are givers! MAGICAL!

But they're in the hospital, and so they might miss their big show! I wonder if they'll make it!

Their friend just delivered a baby with no umbilical cord. That has to be a miracle. Or a record. Or uhm.. a mutant. Maybe close contact with the Spice Girls ruined it? Now the whole thing gets meta as the people who want to make a movie out of the Spice Girls start relating what we're watching. This is not how you end a film.

They couldn't find a way to end this, could they? So they just said, "Well, what if we said this is what happens and then do it?"

As the Spice Girls park the bus and run on foot to the concert they start playing the Rocky theme. Seriously. The Rocky theme. So, anyway, now we'll go out on the concert.

Christ this hurt.